Page 71 (1/2)

He embraced me and took me to the palazzo where our tomb lay hidden I was cold all over by the time we reached the soiled stone stairhere sothem, until we reached the entrance to the cellar

"Light the torch for old around us, if I may "

"There, you have it," he said We stood in our crypt with the two ornate sarcophagi before us I lay my hand on the lid of the one which was mine, and quite suddenly there came over me another presentiment, that all I loved would endure for a very brief time

Marius ht hand through the very fire of

the torch, and touched his warers to my cheek Then he kissed me where this warmth hovered, and his kiss arm

Chapter 10

10

IT TOOK us four nights to reach Kiev Only in the early hours before dawn did we hunt We eon vaults of old neglected castles and in the sepulchers beneath forlorn and ruined churches where the profane ont now to stash their livestock and their hay

There are tales I could tell of this journey, of those brave fortresses we roaes where we found the evildoer in his rude den

Naturally, Marius saw lessons in all this, teachingthe speed hich I h the dense forest, and had no fear of the scattered primitive settlements which we visited on account of my thirst He praised me that I didn't shrink from the dark dusty nests of bones in which we lay down by day, re already been pillaged, were the least likely for ht of the sun

Our fancy Venetian clothes were soon streaked with dirt, but ere provided with thick fur-lined cloaks for the journey, and these covered all Even in this Marius saw a lesson, that we arar for the body and no et it, for we are far less dependent upon our raiment than men

By the lastbefore our arrival in Kiev, I knew the rocky northern woods only too well The dread winter of the north was all around us We had co of all my memories: the presence of snow

"It no longer hurtsthe soft delicious cold snow in er chillsthe poorest of towns and hovels with its blanket Master, look, look how it throws back the light even of the weakest stars "

We were on the edge of the land that men call the Golden Horde- the southern steppes of Russia, which for two hundred years, since the conquest of Genghis Khan, had been too dangerous for the farht

Kiev Rus had once included this fertile and beautiful prairie, stretching far to the East, almost to Europe, as well as south of the city of Kiev, where I had been born