General History of Snezhnaya

General History of Snezhnaya (I)

Preface To the Tsaritsa of All Snezhnaya, Eternal Sovereign Under the Pale Star, Protectress of the Fae Kindreds and of the Lineages of the Peoples of the North, Holy One of All Winters, Sovereign of Grace and Absolution, Grand Suzerain of the Princes of Snezhnograd, Glupov, Kitezh, and Belovodye, Ruler and Conqueror of the Frozen Lands Beneath the Aurora, Devoted Bestower of Boundless Grace, Anastasya Feodorovna Snezhnaya, and to our beloved motherland: Hail, Your Majesty! Only by Your sacred glory has a mortal such as I been released from the afflictions of my former days. By Your solemn compassion, vast as the frozen expanse, am I permitted to stand shoulder to shoulder with the noble immortals, and, with a coarse and inept hand, to endeavor the chronicling of the complete history of our motherland. I shall not boast of this labor: for all of it rightly redounds to Your supreme glory. This general history reaches back to the legends of the Age of Polar Night, sets down in its middle passages the campaigns of Tsar Monomakh, and in its concluding chapters sings the great deeds of Tsaritsa Anastasya. The old world is dying, the new world is waking. Time and again has history shown us that virtue, not force, is the blade with which the world is renewed. The conquests of Tsar Monomakh were, to be sure, as fierce as the harshest winter gale. Yet as for You, Your Majesty: if the happiness that Your exalted virtue brings could be set alongside Your glory, then You must be more blessed than any living being that walks this earth. Most Gracious and Merciful Sovereign! With infinite reverence in my heart, I present this book to You. Your loyal subject and child, Y. S. Klyucheva Volume I: Legends of Hyperborea Historical materials from many diverse sources all bear witness to the following: that in an ancient epoch beyond our imagining, the vast frozen land now called "Snezhnaya," robed in silver snow, was not always so grim. On the contrary, this place once enjoyed a warm climate and lush vegetation, and was a carefree and bountiful plain. Though we cannot glimpse the true likeness of that age, nor can we determine whether the circumstances recorded in the writings of the ancient fae nobility arose from fact or from their fair and abundant imagination (even that most ancient of records, The Volkhov Chronicles, is thousands of years sundered from the golden age its author claims to describe), still, if we choose to trust in those fae poems that at least draw upon legend, then upon this land there once stood a realm named "Hyperborea." Grand Duke P. N. Kostomarov wrote thus: "[They] possessed incomparable virtue... The cities they raised gleamed bright like gold. Because spring was unwilling to depart from that blessed land, it was ever warm spring there. There was no burning summer heat, no piercing winter cold... The people nourished themselves on the honey and dew that fell from the heavens above. So it was for hundreds of ages... until their descendants, in ease, lost their nobility, whereupon spring forsook their homeland, and the long winter followed close behind..." The contemporary Songbook of Saint Strivozha (said to have been composed by "The Pure One" Strivozha herself) tells a different legend: The eternal King of Light could not tolerate the coming of darkness, and so he imprisoned his daughter in the world of darkness, wishing to illuminate the fading land with her radiance. The King of Hyperborea drew her out from deep within the earth as bright as daylight, and from that time onward there was night in the world, and she came to be called the Mother of Night. They lay together and bore seven Preexistent Gods and twelve Preexistent Men, whose descendants multiplied upon the earth and founded Hyperborea, Hyperborea of gold and white stone. Realizing that the alternation of day and night could no longer be prevented, the wrathful King of Light destroyed Hyperborea, slaughtering the bloodlines of the seven Preexistent Deities to the last. Only the young son of the final monarch survived by chance: Tsar Monomakh. And it is for this reason that he was rightfully to rule over all fae and all of humankind. In any case, strange fables must ultimately cede ground to true history. Before the founding of Kitezhgrad, Tsar Monomakh did in truth wander the blizzard-swept lands for hundreds of years in the aspect of a young hero, unequalled in valor. It was during this time that he came to know those great heroic companions who would in later days stand at his side in battle, and that he first sketched out the form of that realm of virtue and mercy which he dreamed to found. ...