Chapter 8: The Student

Danka and her fellow initiates eagerly awaited the Fall Equinox, when they would give up the title of “Initiate” and become fully accepted members of the Cult of the Ancients. To mark the change in their status, they would wear the Cult of the Ancients’ skull on their formal outfits. They handed over their dresses and tunics to the group’s most experienced seamstress, who carefully embroidered the skull that would tell the world that the wearer was a fully-accepted Follower.

Equally important was the skull-staff. Following the sacrifice of the five fortune-hunters, one of the elders cut off their heads and took them to a secret chamber under the Altar of Blood-Nourishment. He spent several days cleaning the skulls before soaking them in a special solution to harden the bone. He drilled holes at the base that would allow the skulls to be mounted on staffs. Finally, he coated the skulls with a special sealant that would prevent them from getting stained and make them as sturdy as a hard piece of wood.

The skull-staff issued to a new Follower was nothing more than a simple wooden pole, but most Followers learned wood-carving and eventually carved designs or pictures into their staffs during their free time. One way for a Christian to tell how long a cult-member had been a Follower was to look at their staff. The most elaborately carved staffs belonged to Followers with the most experience.

However, the season did not give the Initiates much time to think about what life would be like after they became fully accepted Followers. The first three weeks of September were an extremely busy period for everyone in Babackt Yaga’s settlement. It was the last opportunity to bring in food, harvest a final batch of alchemy ingredients, and haul wagonloads of mysterious cave-charcoal.

The final cave-charcoal trip took more than a week and was the most unpleasant event in September: the roads already were muddy, the wagon wheels were constantly getting stuck, and the loads were unbelievably heavy. Kaloyankt reminded Danka that as bad as lugging the black rocks might be, the trip would save the Followers from having to spend the winter chopping wood for fires.

The activity in the kitchen was frenetic, the final chance to preserve food that would allow the Followers to survive the winter. The kitchen had been in an open building all summer, but just before the cave-charcoal trip, the settlers enclosed the structure with a set of ingenuously-made wooden panels. The building would become a warm refuge from the bitter weather outside: not just a place for cooking and eating, but also a place for study and singing practice.

The trip to the Altar of Blood-Nourishment was an unpleasant slog along muddy trails passing through endless groves of trees obscured in cold fog and mist. It was hard to believe that just a few weeks before the area had been so green and pleasant. Danka and the other initiates were hugely relieved when the Altar finally came into view. The Followers went through the secret door and into the underground labyrinth to rest and change into dry clothing.

The ceremony took place at midnight. The Followers were arranged just like they were during the sacrifice: the men immediately around the altar and the women standing around them in a circle, holding their staffs and chanting. Everyone, with the exception of Babackt Yaga and the five initiates, was dressed in their formal black clothing. Babackt Yaga was covered in her black and white ceremonial paint, while the initiates were naked. The newest members trembled as they waited in the cold night air, but the equally-naked alchemist didn’t seem bothered by the temperature in the least.

Danka expected Babackt Yaga to spend a long time shouting prayers and incantations, given her normal penchant for ceremonial flare and drama. However, on that night Babackt Yaga seemed very humble and subdued. One by one the initiates knelt in front of her while she took their hands and silently prayed.

Danka was the first of her group to pray with her mentor. As soon as she knelt and took the old woman’s hands, her world went black. The large hostile eyes from the forest re-emerged. As always, the eyes took over her world and were only thing she could see.

“I have returned, Danka Siluckt. You see, I didn’t forget you.”

“Of course you didn’t forget about me. I never thought you would. Now I know you won’t leave me in peace. But I’ve accepted it.”

“Perhaps, Danka Siluckt, perhaps you have accepted my presence. But that doesn’t mean your Path in Life will ever be any easier. Learning brings knowledge, and knowledge brings despair. I have blessed your Mistress with much knowledge, more than any other living mortal. And yet, she is no happier for it. I granted her many extra years of life, but those years have brought her no joy. Like your Mistress, you will be blessed.”

“I wouldn’t call anything from you a blessing. And my Path in Life is my own, not yours or anyone else’s. Now, I call upon the Ancients to cast you out.”

The eyes slowly faded and vanished. Danka knew that it was nothing more than a reprieve. The Profane One would return, of that she could be sure, but at least now she knew it was possible to fight back.

When her consciousness returned to the Realm of the Living, her eyes met those of Babackt Yaga. The old woman’s expression did not change, but it seemed that she was fully aware of what had just happened in her initiate’s inner world. Somehow, she knew.

With a slight tug of her hands, Babackt Yaga silently ordered Danka to stand up. An elder brought her the black dress, now complete with a finely-stitched image of a skull.

“You will dress. You now have earned your rightful place among the Followers of the Ancients. The Ancients will bless you with knowledge, and burden you with responsibility.”

Danka was extremely grateful to get dressed and finally cover her body against the chilly wind whipping around the open meadow. Babackt Yaga picked up a newly-crafted staff, complete with a real skull, the skull of a man who had been alive, just three weeks before. The skull contained a finely crafted oil lamp, which was vented through the eye sockets and designed to be resistant to being blown out unintentionally. An elder lit the lamp. The alchemist held out the staff.

“In much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain. This staff brings burden and responsibility into your life, not peace and happiness. Perhaps the Ancients will allow you a few moments of happiness as you progress through your days in the Realm of the Living, but happiness is a gift, and a very fleeting one at that. Do you accept that the Path of Your Life is not the blind pursuit of pleasure?”

“I accept that, Babackt Yaga. The blind pursuit of pleasure is not my Path in Life.”

“Then you will take up this burden. Everyday, for the rest of your time among the living, you must earn the right to carry it. Learning is never finished. Acquiring knowledge is never finished. And the struggle to serve will never be finished.”

Babackt Yaga handed the staff to Danka. The women let out a long wail. When the eerie mournful noise finally died down, Danka left the altar and took her place among the Followers. She waited for her fellow initiates to receive their outfits and staffs. As each of her companions took up their burden, she celebrated by wailing along with the others.

The Followers spent the night sleeping in the underground passages before closing them up for the year. The next day they took precautions to hide the entrance and to clean the holy site to remove all evidence of their most recent visit.

As soon as they returned to Babackt Yaga’s settlement, most of Danka’s companions prepared to leave the mountains for the entire winter. Within days they departed, taking with them pack loads of alchemy ingredients and medical equipment. The majority of the Followers took up residence in the houses of wealthy provincial citizens instead of constantly making the arduous trek up and down snow-covered mountain trails. No matter where they went, the Followers could always rely on a patron to provide free room and board, which was a small price to pay for having a doctor readily accessible to their families and friends. Hosting a Follower also provided honor and prestige within the community, because the Followers attended the medical needs of anyone nearby who needed their services.

Winter came earlier, stayed longer, and was much harsher in the northern highlands than in the cities in the Duchy’s western valley. As the nights grew colder and a storm of sleet hit the compound, Danka realized that she would miss the comparatively mild climate of Starivktaki Moskt. While the valley-dwellers still enjoyed the gentle sunshine of the early fall, in the mountains the tree leaves already had turned with the cold frosty weather.

The colder climate forced the Followers to give up their habit of not wearing clothing in the settlement and while wandering in the nearby mountains and streambeds. However, even during the winter the Followers sought to set themselves apart from conventional society. They didn’t wear their formal Cult clothing, but instead wore fur-lined leather shirts and boots. If the temperature outside remained above freezing, they wore nothing else, which meant they remained naked between their knees and their waists. Danka thought the cult members looked very odd, their bare thighs and bottoms contrasting with their fur-covered feet and torsos. Even in the coldest weather the settlers rarely wore any type of trousers, but instead protected their bodies with outer robes that were black and similar in appearance to the hooded prayer robes used by worshipers in the Danubian Church.

Babackt Yaga’s settlement was quiet after her doctors departed for the winter. The only people remaining were the ones who most recently had joined the Cult and still needed training, and a few older members who had retired from traveling. The older members spent their days educating the younger ones, making sure their knowledge and skills were passed on before their Paths in Life ended.

The medical training over the winter was intense and often depressing. The camp kept a supply of preserved headless bodies from sacrificial victims for the young Followers to practice on and dissect. The young members also practiced on live animals such as pigs, which had to be deliberately injured. Sometimes the senior Followers cut the pigs with swords or daggers, and sometimes they pushed an animal off a platform onto rocks to break its bones. Then it was up to the younger Followers to anesthetize the struggling and squealing subject to evaluate and treat its injuries. Any animal about to be butchered for meat was injured and operated on several times before finally being killed. It was cruel and unpleasant work, but at the time there really was no other training method available. Babackt Yaga could not afford to place her group’s reputation in jeopardy by having her newest students train on human patients and risk making a mistake.

Training for operations and attending injuries was only a small part of Babackt Yaga’s education for her newest subordinates. She left the physical training to the elders. For her, understanding alchemy was much more important than being a good field surgeon. She already had introduced the newcomers to creating basic medicines. Now that they had their skulls and were fully accepted in the Cult, they could be trusted with preparing more sophisticated medicines and working with the most expensive and hard-to-obtain ingredients. One of the first recipes that the three women learned was preparing the Followers’ much-coveted birth-control paste.

“No matter where you go, with this knowledge every woman, from harlot to baroness, will seek your favor and friendship.”

As the snow fell and the cold wind whipped around the settlement, Babackt Yaga gathered the five newest members of her group into her laboratory and library. Over the years she had collected a copy of every book on medicine and alchemy known at the time, including ancient texts written in Arab, Greek, and Latin. She had inherited part of the collection, but during her life had greatly expanded it. She also had translated many of the Greek and Latin texts into Danubian and wrote commentaries on the effectiveness of the medical procedures and how to improve upon them. Whenever she finished a translation, she had a Follower make a copy and had it sent to an associate who maintained a library and printing press in Sebernekt Ris.

As an example of her work with translations, Babackt Yaga directed her students’ attention to a couple of old books lying on her study table. The titles were in a foreign language: Historia Plantarum and De artificiosis extractionibus liber. The books were in horrible condition: very worn and with the pages covered with annotations handwritten in Danubian.

“Two hundred years ago a young man called Valerius Cordus conducted research on plants and their medicinal uses. He wrote extensively and recovered much of the knowledge that was lost during Humanity’s Great Rebellion against the Ancients. My Path in Life included translating these works into the language of the Duchy to ensure his knowledge is available to our people. The Paths of the Followers’ Lives calls upon us to expand upon what people like Valerius Cordus discovered. I say expand, because there are many plants unique to the Duchy that Valerius Cordus did not know about. So, we’ve studied his experiments and applied them to Danubian plants. Also, we’ve imported and cultivated the most useful foreign plants described in his works and refined his medical research. Year after year the Followers have built upon his knowledge, and in doing so, we are acting in defiance of the Profane One. The day will come when the Profane One will tire of my efforts and end my Path in Life, but until that day comes, I will continue my work to recover what has been lost, and your Path in Life is to assist me in that effort.”

So, during her first winter as a Follower, Danka’s duties included copying translations that would be sent to Sebernekt Ris, where they would be printed for further distribution. She perfected her penmanship and continued to expand on her vocabulary. Strange to think, just two years before she had been completely illiterate, and now she was transcribing complicated medical studies.

An important arrangement that the settlement’s remaining residents had to make for the winter was sleeping. There were three sleeping houses, but at any given time only two were occupied. Every month the houses were rotated so that one could be left “fallow”. That meant the structure was evacuated, swept out, and the windows left open to freeze any insects or rodents that had taken up residence inside. The Followers took clean bedding, bathed, and set up in the house that had previously been unoccupied.

Danka learned why Babackt Yaga took such extreme precautions. In a country where fleas, lice, and bedbugs were still extremely common, the alchemist was determined to keep such vermin to a minimum in her settlement. She was convinced that blood-sucking insects carried many of the “Profane One’s” curses; most notably bubonic plague.

By the mid-1700’s the Danubians had figured out that bubonic plague was associated with rats, hence they started calling the sickness “the rat plague” and began measures to reduce the number of rats in their settlements. After decades of observations and reading, Babackt Yaga suspected that it was not the rats that directly brought the plague to humans. She had figured out that both rats and humans were affected by the same disease, and looked for a possible common cause. Finally, through a series of experiments with groups of sick and healthy rats, she determined that the rat plague was caused by a blood-poison that was transmitted by fleas, not the rats themselves. Ridding an area of rats certainly helped control the plague, but what really mattered was ridding an area of fleas.

She researched other blood-poisoning curses of the Profane One, and had decided that insects, especially fleas and mosquitoes, were the Profane One’s messengers that carried blood poison from one person to the next. Thus, the way to stop the Profane One from poisoning blood involved minimizing the number of blood-sucking insects.

Each sleeping house was heated with a metal stove for cave-charcoal. However, the heating was inadequate: during the coldest months it was just enough to keep the rooms’ temperature from falling below freezing. The beds helped, because they were enclosed with thick covers on top and around the sides. All of the beds were large enough to fit two people comfortably, so to conserve warmth each Follower slept with another person, either their closest friend or a lover. So ... a final detail that Danka needed to arrange was finding a person to share her assigned bed.

Danka knew that she needed to take Kaloyankt as her sleeping partner. After having spent the previous winter enjoying a bed to herself at the Church Temple, she was not thrilled at having to return to sharing one. Unfortunately, the cold did not give her or anyone else a choice in the matter. She had to have another person to keep her warm while sleeping, and Kaloyankt was the logical choice. It was what he expected and what everyone else expected. Rather than risk hurting his feelings and spurring possible gossip among her companions, Danka announced that she would pass the winter with Kaloyankt.

Kaloyankt was, of course, elated. Now that she officially shared his bed, he considered her as “his woman”. During the long winter nights he was guaranteed sex whenever he wanted it, because Danka acquiesced anytime he touched her and sought to arouse her. Danka and Kaloyankt were young, vigorous, and in excellent health. Under their dark canopy they practiced every sexual position imaginable many times over.

Kaloyankt was under the impression that sharing a bed and having sex with Danka would solidify their relationship, with the end result being marriage whenever they were ready to leave Babackt Yaga’s settlement and venture forth into the world. Danka fully understood her lover’s expectations, but the more time she spent with him, the more her doubts about the relationship increased. She couldn’t understand why, because Kaloyankt was the type of man she was looking for. He was educated, intelligent, and the son of nobility. He was a good sexual partner and a vigorous lover. He respected her and did not seem to hold her peasant upbringing against her.

And yet, and yet, Danka spent many sleepless nights troubled by her own illogical emotions, even as she lay in her lover’s arms and felt his breath on her body. She couldn’t imagine staying with him past the spring. He was a part of her present, but if she couldn’t force herself to love him, how could he be part of her future?

The daily routine of studying chemistry and medicine, learning new alchemy formulas, preparing potions, practicing surgery on cadavers and injured pigs, spending several hours copying translations, and practicing hymns and chants in archaic Danubian left Danka’s companions mentally exhausted at the end of each day. Apart from learning, the Followers had to attend to their physical needs in a hostile environment. They had to prepare meals, care for their livestock, and keep their living area clean. There were time-consuming setbacks, such as the day four pigs escaped and only two were re-captured, and the night an extreme cold snap killed a third of the settlement’s hens and burst a cistern. Even in a well-run settlement, winter was a time of hardship.