Grigori shrank, and for a moment, Nikolai glimpsed the shape of a man with gentle eyes and dark curly hair. He wore the skins of a bear around his shoulders, and the bear’s head as a mantle … but then the bear moved, and it was as if man and animal were one, standing together.
“I don’t know whether I should mention this,” said Nikolai. “But I’ve been told the pelt of the bear that killed you is in the vault of the royal chapel in Os Alta. I wore it at my coronation.”
“I’m afraid your priests have been sold a counterfeit,” said Grigori, the image of the mantle flickering over his shoulders again. “That bear never died, much as I never truly died.”
“It became your amplifier?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” said Grigori as he split once again into a larger body, a tide of legs and arms.
“I think I remember your story. You were a healer.” A young healer, renowned for his cures of the most hopeless cases. He had healed the son of a nobleman afflicted with some plague, and the nobleman’s doctor, most likely afraid he was about to be out of a job, had accused Grigori of trafficking in dark magic. Grigori had been sent into the woods to be torn apart by beasts, but he had fashioned a lyre from the bones of those who had trespassed in the wood before and played a song so soothing, the bears of the forest had lain down at his feet. The next day, when Grigori emerged from the woods unharmed, the nobleman’s soldiers bound his hands and sent him back into the forest. Unable to play his lyre, Grigori was savaged by the very bears who had slept at his feet the night before. Bloody reading for a young prince. It was a wonder Nikolai had slept at all as a child.
“I was a healer,” Grigori said, and his many legs bent at the knee as if he might rest many chins on them. “But I did things that perhaps I should not have. I made babies for mothers who had none. I made brides for men who desired them. I made a great soldier, twelve feet tall with fists like boulders, to protect a count’s castle.”
“The stuff of children’s stories,” Nikolai said, remembering his nannies’ tales of witches and gingerbread golems.
“Now, yes. Then … I had no care for the boundaries that governed my power. Merzost was too great a lure. I thought little of whether I should do a thing but only if I could.”
“That kind of power is unpredictable,” said Nikolai, quoting David.
Grigori chuckled again, the sound rueful and murmuring as a crop of new heads clustered together, their expressions mournful.
“Death is easy. But birth? Resurrection? The work of creation belongs to the First Maker alone. I trafficked in merzost and lost control of my own form. So I became a hermit, at least for a time. Eventually, of course, people sought me out, eager to learn my secrets regardless of how disturbed they were by the way I looked. We are always drawn to the lure of power, no matter the cost. They called me the Bodymaker, and I took on hundreds of students over time. I taught them how to use their gifts for healing and for combat. They went out into the world and they all bore my name, or a form of it.”
“Grisha,” Nikolai said in surprise. Grigori had trained the first Healers and Heartrenders, the first Corporalki. “That was where it all began?”
“Maybe,” said Grigori. “Or maybe that’s just another story. It was all so long ago.” His entire form seemed to slump, a sleeping bear, a weary man, the burden of his imprisonment settling over him. “You will not see much of me in your tenure here. I do not like to be looked at, and I find it hard to bend my hermit’s ways. But if there is anything you need, please do not hesitate to come to my tower. I know it is not a welcoming place, but I assure you, you are welcome.”
“Thank you,” Nikolai said, though he could concede that he had little desire to enter a tower made of bone and gristle.
“Elizaveta can be a harsh teacher, but I hope you will not be swayed from your goal. There is a great deal at stake in your success. For all of us.”
“What will you do when you are free of the Fold?”
“You’re so certain you will endure the trial?”
“I like to bet on myself whenever I can. But usually with other people’s money.”
Grigori’s dejected form seemed to regain some of its structure, sprouting into a curved spine and a series of folded arms. He looked like a strange tree, tilting toward the sun. “When my power is gone, when I become mortal, I will once again take on a steady form. Or perhaps I will die. Either way, I will be free.”
“Then I will do my best for all of us.”
Now Grigori leaned forward, a chorus of human heads with dark eyes, jaws like muzzles full of pointed animal teeth. Nikolai had to force himself not to step back.
“You must, my friend. Everything is connected. The world is changing, and so is Grisha power. If the Fold continues to exist, it will not remain the same either.”
Nikolai had felt it too, this rush toward change. Borders were shifting; weapons were evolving. It was impossible to know what might come next. “Yuri claims we’re about to enter an Age of Saints.”
Grigori sighed, and the sound gusted through the chamber. “Do you know why the monster inside you woke? Why the Darkling’s power was able to emerge after all of this time? It began with the drug parem. It made things possible that never should be. It altered the bounds of Grisha power.”
“Parem?”
“If the drug had been eradicated—”
“We tried.”
The teeth in Grigori’s many mouths grew longer. “You did not. You tried to alter it, bend it to your will. That is the lure of power.”
Nikolai could not deny it. He had known that if they did not find a way to harness the power of parem, in time some other country would, even without Kuwei’s knowledge to guide them. But then Ravka’s experiments … “I helped to wake the demon.”
Grigori’s heads nodded. “We are all connected, King Nikolai. The Grisha, the Fold, the power inside you. The Fold is a wound that may never heal. But perhaps it was not meant to. Remember that when you face your trial.”
Nikolai felt he was supposed to say something profound, place his hand over his heart, make a solemn vow. He was saved from such displays by Yuri, who entered the chamber from the hallway. So the monk had not been quietly muttering psalms in his room.
“Sankt Grigori,” he said with a deep bow, his glasses glinting like coins. “Forgive me. I did not mean to interrupt.”
“Not at all,” said the Bodymaker, but Nikolai could already see him shrinking, hands emerging from his own torso to pull him down the corridor, as if herding himself away from the interest of curious eyes. “Best of luck to you, King Nikolai,” he said, and was gone.
“I … I meant no offense,” stammered Yuri.
“I fear he thinks he’s the one giving offense.”
“His form is disconcerting, yes, but he is a Saint, a divine being.”
“We’re trained to understand the ordinary, to fear difference, even if that difference is divine.” Nikolai clapped his hands together. “Now, are we ready to figure out how to kill me?”
“Oh, Your Highness, no, no. Certainly not. But I do have some thoughts on the ritual, and Elizaveta—” He hesitated over her name as if even the speaking of it was a holy rite. “Elizaveta wishes to begin your training.”