They went to Demyan, the nobleman whose land the forest had grown upon, and asked that he do something about the trees. Demyan had his servants go out to the forest with their axes and cut a smooth path to the cemetery so that all could walk comfortably through the woods.
But when the rains came, without trees to stop the floods, water rushed straight down the path to the graveyard, uprooting markers and gravestones and casting the lids off tombs.
Again, the townspeople came to complain. This time, Demyan designed an aqueduct and had it built around the cemetery so that the rain would not disturb the graves and the water would be diverted to irrigate the fields. But the aqueduct cast the graveyard in shade, so plants and flowers rarely grew there, and now families shivered in the cold when they went to visit their dead.
Yet again the people brought their grievances to Demyan. But this time he was not certain what to do. He walked the path to the cemetery through the woods and looked up at the tall aqueduct and laid his hands upon the soil. He could think of no solution that would make his people happy, unless the Saints saw fit to raise the cemetery up to the sun itself.
The earth began to shake and the ground rose high, higher, a mountain where there had been no mountain before. When the rumbling stopped, the cemetery perched at its top, where it would never be troubled by floods or crowded by trees.
The people followed Demyan up to the cemetery and found that no grave had been disturbed or soul displaced. Only one tomb was cracked: Demyan’s family crypt.
Maybe they were shaken by the wonders they had seen. Maybe they did not know how to be satisfied. Whatever the reason, the people Demyan had sought so hard to please threw up their hands in woe. They claimed that he had disrespected his family name. They cried that he had cursed them all by using dark magic. Someone picked up a piece of marble from the broken tomb and hurled it at Demyan. Driven mad by getting what they wanted, the others followed, hurling stones at the nobleman until he lay crumpled beneath the ruins of his own family crypt.
It is said that the tallest mountain in the Elbjen is the one upon which Demyan died. He is known as the patron saint of the newly dead.
SANKTA MARYA OF THE ROCK
In the summers, a gathering of Suli often traveled south to Ravka’s border. They would work until the weather began to turn cold, then they would pack up and travel over the Sikurzoi and into the warmer territories of Shu Han. In some places they were turned away by townspeople who refused them any spot to camp. In others, people hostile to the Suli would descend upon their settlements at night with torches and hounds.
But there were some places where the Suli were welcome. Where Suli knowledge was respected, they were offered bread and wine, and pasture for their animals. Where amusement was wanted, the Suli were free to erect their tents and perform their entertainments to happy applause. And where there was work to be done—grimy work, dangerous work that no one else wanted or dared to take on—the Suli were welcomed in those places as well.
The horse races at Caryeva usually lasted late into the fall, and so the Suli often spent the season there. But one year, winter came early, closing down the track and leaving them without work or audiences to play for. A local offered the men jobs in his copper mine, and though the prospect was risky and the Suli knew many had died in the mine’s dark tunnels, they agreed.
However, the night before the men were meant to enter the pits, one of the Suli true seers looked into the leavings of her coffee and warned them not to go into the tunnels. She was known for the clarity of her vision, and none of them took her words lightly.
“What can we do to save ourselves?” they asked.
The old woman placed the jackal mask of the Suli seers over her face and sat for a long time as the others talked quietly by the fire. When the moon had set and the fire had burned down to nothing but ash, she lifted one gnarled hand and pointed to a little girl. “Marya must go with you.”
No one liked this idea, not the girl’s parents, and least of all Marya herself, who still feared the dark. But the next day, when the men set out for the mines, she summoned her courage, took her rag doll in her arms, and clambered onto her father’s shoulders. Into the pits they went, the rock walls close around them, the air moist, the smell of copper in the earth like spilled blood.
The morning passed without incident, then the afternoon, and then the day was done. The workers heaved a sigh of relief and turned to make their way out of the tunnel, back to sunlight and the living world.
That was when the earth began to rumble. The tunnel ahead of them collapsed, blocking out all daylight. But just as the ceiling was about to give way above their heads, Marya, still clutching her rag doll, lifted her little hands. The ceiling held.
The rock walls of the mine shifted like silt in a pan. They shuddered and slid, making an opening so that the Suli might pass. Through the mountain they went, led by Marya on her father’s shoulders, the rock giving way to form a path before them.
They emerged on the other side and there, at the base of the Sikurzoi, the Suli have always been able to find shelter in the caves that Marya left behind.
She is known as the patron saint of those who are far from home.
SANKT EMERENS
The village of Girecht in southern Kerch had long been known for the purity and flavor of its grain, as well as the perfection of the beer made from its barley and hops. Each year when the leaves began to turn, the townspeople set long tables in the main square, hung the trees with lanterns, and welcomed guests from all over Kerch to fill their bellies with the town’s beer and fill Girecht’s coffers with their coin.
The next day, they would go to church to give thanks to Ghezen and their Saints. But one year, the townspeople had grown too merry in their celebrations, and the morning after the festival, they lay abed with headaches instead of going to pray. All but one child, a young boy named Emerens.
Now this child had been pious since his birth. He never cried on Saints’ days—except when the townspeople were late to services. Then he would bawl and howl, his shrill wail carrying over the rooftops and through every window, and nothing might soothe him until his parents and their neighbors went to church. On the morning after that very merry festival, Emerens knocked on every door, trying to rouse the citizens of Girecht, but all refused to answer.
Who can say if what came to pass next was merely bad luck or the hand of providence? Either way, a blight struck Girecht’s fields the following year, leaving the grain spotted and dying.
The villagers managed to cull enough untainted grain to fill four silos, enough for two years’ worth of festivals. They hung lanterns in the main square and set out long tables for feasting. But the next morning, they found that the western silo was a quarter empty. A search revealed ragged holes in the silo’s sides, where some of the grain had spilled out. One of the farmers climbed to the top of the silo, opened the hatch, and shrieked his horror, for the structure was full of rats, their hairy bodies and pink tails thrashing about as they gorged themselves.
The next day the eastern silo was found to have been infested, and the townspeople knew that the northern and southern silos would follow.
“What can we do?” they cried. “If we poison the rats, we’ll poison the grain and we will have no way to make beer for our festival.”