I stare at him blankly, mind racing around the question. It’s so unexpected that my grip almost slackens on the knife. It would have been a good trick, if he’d meant to kill me. When I’ve regained my composure, I reply, “Of course. It’s one of Virág’s many stories. But why does a Woodsman concern himself with pagan legends?”
Gáspár reaches beneath the collar of his suba and pulls out a pendant, hanging on a silver chain. He unwinds the chain from his neck and hands it to me. It’s a small disc of hammered metal, stamped with the seal of the Woodsmen—the same seal that adorns his horse’s breastplate armor. In the foreground, there’s the symbol of the Prinkepatrios, a three-pronged spear, but behind it, engraved so faintly that I have to strain my eyes to see it, is the outline of a hawk.
“The king is very interested in pagan legends,” Gáspár says. There’s a heaviness to his voice. “This one in particular.”
“And why is that?”
“Because he craves power more than purity, and he wants a way to win the war.” Gáspár loops the pendant back around his neck, letting it fall beneath the wool of his suba again. “What did your Virág tell you about the turul?”
The memory of her telling is perfectly lucid, crystalline, and it shines in my mind like a bit of broken glass. The myth is not one she speaks of often, not without some prodding. It was after one of my many failed attempts to make fire, and she’d been feeling magnanimous. Instead of scolding me, she sat me on her knee and tried to teach me the origin stories: how Vilm?tten had rescued Isten’s star from the sea, how he had followed the long stream to the Far North, how he had forged the sword of the gods.
“These stories are the origin of our magic,” Virág had said. “You cannot ever hope to perform any of the three skills unless you understand where they come from.”
I ticked the skills off on my fingers: fire-making, healing, and forging. Each more difficult and elusive than the last. But there was a fourth skill, one that I could never even hope to master. One prized far beyond the rest.
“What about seeing?” I had asked. “What is the origin of that?”
For once, Virág didn’t leap at the chance to tell the story. Her eyes didn’t gleam with the same blue fire they always did when she spoke of such things, buoyed by her fierce love for our people. Instead, her eyes seemed oddly hollow, like two dark empty wells, and in the soft glow of the hearth, her face looked especially old.
“Vilm?tten was exhausted from his long journey,” Virág began. “He wanted to return to his home and rest, though he was uncertain what would wait for him when he arrived at his village. And that was when he saw a great bird with feathers the color of fire dart through the flat gray sky. It seemed to be beckoning him to follow. So he chased after the bird, until finally he watched it roost at the top of a very tall tree. It was the tallest tree he had ever seen, and its broad trunk knifed through the very clouds.
“Vilm?tten began to climb. He climbed for what might have been days. And when he reached the top, he realized that the turul had led him to the tree of life—the tree whose branches cradle the Upper-World, the realm of Isten and the other gods. Its trunk forms the axis of the Middle-World, where he and all other humans lived. And its roots reach all the way down to the Under-World, where ?rd?g and his immortal bride make their home among the gnats and fleas and dead human souls.”
I made a theatrical gagging sound and wrinkled my nose, but still felt a bit sorry for the fleas. Though they were a great bother to us, especially in the summer, I didn’t think they deserved to be aligned with ?rd?g and his army of corpses.
“Hush now,” murmured Virág, with none of her usual fervor. “From where Vilm?tten sat, he could see for miles and miles, to the very edge of the world. And then he saw even further. He saw what had been, and what soon would be.”
“What did he see?” I demanded, but Virág wouldn’t answer me. She only said that when Vilm?tten returned to the ground, he felt very much alone, because he had seen things that no one else ever could. He decided not to return to his village and instead to continue wandering, both blessed and cursed by what the turul had shown him.
I liked that story, and I often begged Virág to tell it again, though she almost always refused. I liked that even with all his power and glory, Vilm?tten was lonely too. Nursing a sour, half-surrendered sort of hope, I’d scaled the tallest tree I could find outside Keszi, trying to glimpse a trace of flame-bright feathers.