Part 6: An Audience With Kharkov:
Once, there came a time where I felt I had to ask our Baron what his plans were for our people and what my part in it is to be.
As I stood out in the courtyard grounds of Castle Pantara the wind howled.
I wondered and felt, not for the first time that going to seek an audience with our ruler to hear it straight from the source was probably not such a good idea.
However, if there was anyone with a clear vision about where a successful Valachan's future laid, it would be our ruler.
He and his father were both a drastic improvement over former Mayor Ostlin of Helbenik. That's what the records and our collective memory say on the subject.
I made my way to the nearest paw shaped gatehouse and with it was the security checkpoint I needed to pass through.
It is well known that there are werepanthers among the number of those serving in Baron Von Kharkov's Black Leopard Militia.
It is also known that these footsoldiers are simultaneously among the most corrupt and the most die hard loyalists.
I had no blatantly magical objects on me for them to seize as contraband. A snarling guard demanded to know what the hell I thought bringing a silver sickle on my person. I snarled back that I was a Moarnekone and he should stand down, that if he attempted to force it from me he would find several inches of it poking from his abdomen before we were finished. His cohorts manning the checkpoint snickered.
The guard captain flushed and told me that would not be necessary. I put my weapon in a burlap sack. You are not supposed to bring weapons with you into the castle. With thick leather gloves the guardsmen handled my bagged weapon quite gingerly and said I could have it back once my audience with the Baron had been concluded.
My suspicion was confirmed that some if not most of those black leopards in the station checkpoint were werebeasts in their human form since it seemed to be more that the weapon was silvered than that it was a weapon which caused them the most panic.
It is well known that black leopards are often susceptible to threats and bribes.
Coming from the larders of the castle was a briny aroma. That hit my nose. I wouldn't say it was an assault on the nostrils so much as that it was a definite distinctive presence quick to remind any visitors of our Baron's large scale pickling industry. Many Valachani are selected and "given" the opportunity to work preserving foodstuffs in the castle. It is kind of the Baron to give his subjects work.
Masterfully fine crafted wooden and wicker furniture complemented the rooms, as is to be expected. We Valachani are proud of our basket weaving and carpentry. It made sense our ruler would showcase this native craft in his choice of decor.
I panicked. I was really going to do it. I was going to see our dread ruler in all of his great and terrible splendor. This was happening. I would meet him in person.
Relax Cristan I thought to myself. He is just a man, albeit a very powerful one. One known to be a remarkable duelist with his paired long and short swords. One who can make people he does not like easily disappear.
One whose primal and carnal appetites made him go through wives at a rate of one a year, sometimes even every half a year. Well, I don't know that he kills them. It does seem strange that every woman the Baron takes for a mate has something tragic or gruesome become of her without exception, but could he really be that much of a monster? This was our leader for crying out.
"Godnatten..." a rich baritone voice came from the throne chamber ahead of the lobby I was in. Vaasi obviously.
The Baron was speaking to me?! Well certainly that is who it would be in his throne room sitting on his dais.
Seated on his throne he appraised me looking me up and down and had a wary hand rested on the girded hilt at his nearby hip. One of his magic swords.
"...Ungradi?" He eyed me a bit further. "Güd, I like the Ungradi and they do like me." Von Kharkov chuckled.
"I trust your travel through the Skoven was nothing too perilous... You will have to forgive the guards" he was referring to my screening for weapons and magical objects. "I cannot be too careful. My father was... Careless and well, what with Za Cat still floating at large, passing through several hands, you know?"
"I know of the Cat of Felkovic my liege. I would like to help you destroy it."
He raised a pointed brow. "Would you now?"
----
Even though no harm befell me during the encounter I found it overall very unnerving and would not again voluntarily go to Castle Pantara. If I was ordered to then I would but it is a chilling experience.
That evening the Baron and I held discourse over a handful of topics. We talked about state and the church but also about national identity and a few other things.
His interests as he told me are in maintaining his Barony.
He asked me would Ungrad's taxes be delivered on time and further suggested he hoped they would be, for my city's sake.
I told him I would see Dr. Hoyer about it as soon as I could on my return first thing. He said this was fine and I was doing fine as a cleric of our God.
At this point I asked him had he ever himself seen Yutow or His spirit during an eclipse, in the mists or the like during any point in his long reign.
The entire time we had our conversation he had been nursing a bowl of blood-milk porridge, or
drikke. He lapped it up, when pausing to reflect with behavior and motion much more the way a cat does rather than how a human tongue behaves... As though it hinged in reverse. I tried not to stare.
Was it just my imagination or did he seem quite like a beast as well as a nobleman? Somehow both at once. His eyes would flick a certain way whenever displeased by the topic at hand during our discussion, and in a certain light... I shook the thought from my head.
This and many other more subtle things were off about how the Baron carried himself. His posture and body language seemed... Overall not quite right.
https://giphy.com/gifs/filmeditor-horror-1970s-l2YWpodE8l3j9rrFeHe is a very tall man and muscular. Both the Baron and his father before him the majority of the time would wear gloves. I assume it is due to some sort of hereditary skin condition.
There were many eerie things about the castle and my host.
He had to have servants but the whole place seemed rather empty in the dining hall and throne room. The lobby... Where were his attendants? I don't think they had the night off.
His answer surprised and shook me. Kharkov the Second told me that Yutow is felt in our hearts and that he believed the green man in the moon spoke to one of his ancestors. He has dreams of Yutow and his nature and animal lunar spirit court sometimes.
We should not seek to meet the Peacebringer until our time on this mortal coil is quite nearly up. When it is the twilight dusk of our life, then we if we are lucky may be visited by Brother Panther who will take us to meet the Peacebringer.
The Panther spirit is our cultural equivalent of the reaper. It means death but is not... Necessarily a bad thing.
"...My little priest," the Baron enunciated clearly and methodically, his deep voice filling the dining area (one has to wonder about the acoustics of these audience chambers)
"are you in such a hurry to die, truly? I could arrange that but somehow I do not think that is what you want.""Err, no my lord."
===
He is not an unthinking monster. He is our master, calculated and well educated. He knows much about what goes on in our country and even some of what happens outside it elsewhere in the core. He is known for the quality of his network of informants. To go against him is idiotic at best.
That our political policy tends towards insular isolationism to a large extent is not because we are weak but because we Valachani possess a strong independent streak. We are rugged individualists with a collectively communal family and social structure.
Our baron seemed to know well in advance I had wanted to see him even before his guards announced me in his court. He exuded a mixture of calm and nervousness like a jungle cat on a perch measuring distances in its head for trajectory of pouncing. His debates if they could be called such had his fiercely intense personality cut directly past any blocks I would have put up. There was also a grim playfulness the times he would dance around a point.
Baron Kharkov II has a keen mind for details and human behavior... Almost as though he were something quite more than human amusing himself by playing at being one. His presence is terrible to behold. It is difficult to converse with him due to his primal, almost animalistic force of being. When you are in the same room, even times he is not being hostile you feel it bearing down on you.
He is by all accounts a dangerous man but I do not know that I would call our ruler a monster. Maybe he is simply maladjusted. Perhaps he does not like being around crowds. Like many leaders in the core he enjoys his personal space and privacy to a nearly obsessive degree. Power has its privileges.
===
The Baron told me he was glad that I went to see him and ask what was wanted of me as a priest of the church but that I should not come to Castle Pantara again without proper invitation. Other people had been put to death for much less. He said we might be in touch and if he wanted something of me he would send an official messenger to the Ungrad Church. Most unusually, he personally approved of my standing down the guards at the checkpoint and threatening them with use of force. His guards. He told them I could have my weapon back on my way out.
I worry that one of these days the taxes will be found wanting.
The Baron seems much more reasonable than his lieutenant Lady Adeline.
I dread arrival of his messengers. My fellow clergy, we have our protocol for when officials and heads of state are visiting the church. The acolytes are to make sure the shrines are spotless and that authorities are treated to our best food and wine for accommodation. No one is to dip into the tithe coffers without first express consent of the Moarnekone. If the Black Leopards do not receive their sacks of bullion there will be hell to pay. You do not want so many unnecessary deaths of innocents on your hands. Theft from the taxes is not to be tolerated.
Though we both were at the table that evening looking at each other yellow eyes to yellow eyes I got the sense we were entire worlds apart. It was unnerving to put things mildly.