Susan Johnson - Golden Paradise

"He was a generous warmhearted man," she quietly finished, pleased to see some color back in Lisaveta's cheeks. "And he loved you very much."

"This baby will be part of Stefan, with his beautiful eyes, perhaps, or his smile," Lisaveta murmured, Stefan's presence so real for a moment that she drew in a breath of surprise. "Was he always tall?"

"He was tall in a country of tall men," Militza replied with a smile, rejoicing in Lisaveta's first sign of interest, her first words implying a future.

"We'll teach the baby how to ride young like Stefan." Her golden eyes had taken on life.

"Or her," Militza softly suggested.

"Or her," Lisaveta echoed, her voice warm with feeling. "It's up to us to see to Stefan's wishes, isn't it?" she went on, more animated, some of the old resourcefulness Stefan had admired prominent in her tone. And sitting up slowly, she brushed her heavy chestnut hair away from her face. She smiled, a small rueful upturning of her mouth. "He wouldn't have tolerated all my self-pity, would he?"

Militza smiled back. "Not for long," she quietly replied. "Stefan believed in taking charge of one's life."

"He did, didn't he?" Her pallor had been replaced by a rosy glow of health and her expression was wryly musing.

"Sometimes with a vengeance," Militza said with a wide smile.

"In that case," Lisaveta said, lifting up one of Stefan's shirts and beginning to fold it away, "I mustn't let him down."

How resilient youth is, Militza thought, seeing the ashen wraith of moments ago restored to a healthy bloom. And how valiant and brave, she mused, gazing at the beautiful young woman who'd brought such happiness to her nephew. "Stefan would be proud of you, my dear," she said softly.

The rumors started almost immediately after his death because the bodies of Stefan and his Kurdish bodyguard had never been found. The logical explanation took into account the fire that swept through the citadel after the battle, a fire that had spread so fast and burnt so high the night sky had been lighted up for a hundred miles. Half the dead bodies and unfortunate wounded were cremated where they lay. The screams of the dying had been more horrible than the bloody hours of battle. The night sky, survivors said, echoed with their shrieking agony, like a scene from hell.

The added and awful tragedy cast a pall over the glorious victory.

But it was the apocalyptic nature of the fire that fueled the first stories of Stefan's rise from the dead.

The mystic tendencies of the peasant mentality and the religious imagery of the common soldier deified in a pagan mythical hopefulness the best and favorite of their leaders. Stefan had always possessed a personal bond with his army; he had fought at their side, ate, slept and suffered with his soldiers, understood their fears, shared their triumphs and the intimacies of their lives. They would not relinquish his memory and refused to concede his death. The White General, the Prince, the Savior of Mirum had never been defeated. Even Kars, the citadel of citadels, had fallen before his courage. He couldn't be dead, no more than he could be defeated.

He'd become a pilgrim, they said, like the pious and gentle Alexander I, wandering the countryside and steppes and forests, searching for peace, seeking solace in the solitude of vast Mother Russia. To touch him was good fortune; to see him even from afar was acknowledgement from God that a better life lay ahead… a life without suffering and pain, a life of serenity and peace.

Nikki heard the rumors very early, no more than two weeks after the battle. He accepted them as natural for a country unable to come to terms with Stefan's death. The loss of Russia's favorite general had struck the Empire to the core; there was no one to replace Stefan in temperament and charisma, in competence or ability.

Another two weeks passed but the rumors of Stefan's resurrection persisted; they were, in fact, augmented daily by additional reports and new tales. Nikki considered himself a pragmatic man, so he ignored the stories at first when he heard them at the club or in the military offices, and he'd patiently listen to the latest hearsay with a tolerant courtesy. Then one day Haci's name was mentioned in the most current report of Stefan's reappearance. Stefan was in the mountains, rumor had it, nursing his aide back to health. Details were included this time by a villager who had supposedly talked to him.

Nikki went home and set his valet to packing.

And then he went in search of his wife to explain his impractical journey.

Alisa was in the nursery, rocking baby Georgi. When her husband declared his intention in an erratic presentation at the same time hopeful and hopeless, she gazed at him over the head of their youngest child sleeping in her arms and said, "Could it even remotely be true?" Her thoughts were on Lisaveta.

"Realistically, no one could survive the fire," he replied with a small sigh. Nikki had spoken with many of the survivors and he wasn't optimistic about "even remotely." Bodies had been charred to ashes in the flaming inferno. The fact Stefan's body hadn't been recovered wasn't an isolated incident. Thousands of men had disappeared into ashes. "I don't know what to say-" he shrugged, his expression grave "-that won't sound pessimistic…"

"Yet you're going," his wife softly declared. "Why?"

"To set my conscience at ease, I suppose. And for Stefan," Nikki slowly said. "Because I'd want him to look for me, too, even if it was a chance in a million."

Nikki arrived in Tiflis four days later. He spoke to Militza first for he wasn't certain how Lisaveta was dealing with Stefan's death. If she wasn't emotionally stable, he didn't wish to inform her of his mission. He felt compelled to follow the rumors however unprosperous their substance, however fruitless his search, because his friendship with Stefan demanded it. But something in him did insist on hope. What he hadn't mentioned to Alisa, for it seemed too tenuous even to himself, were his own feelings about Stefan's extraordinary will to survive. In fact, over the years they'd been friends, he'd often wondered if Stefan recognized the finality of death or whether he'd do battle with the grim reaper, too, when his time came. And since his body had never been identified-although in the charred remains of so many tragic souls, his could have been as unrecognizable as any other-Nikki retained the minutest, unsubstantial, inexplicable hope Stefan might have lived.

With all his heart and every dim, obscure mystical interpretation of his spirit, he wished the rumors true.

A month had passed since the fall of Kars, slightly longer still since Nikki had seen Lisaveta on her wedding day, and she looked altered walking into the morning room, paler, more delicate, her luminous eyes strangely otherworldly and underscored with dark and melancholy shadows.

"You must eat," he said immediately, rising to greet her.

She smiled. "I am, Nikki, for Stefan's child."

"You're too pale." He took her hands in his and gazed at her in the judgmental familiar way of family. Was she too slender? Her hands perhaps too cool? Did the cranberry shade of her gown accent the whiteness of her skin? She wasn't wearing black, he noted, but knowing her own strength of character and Stefan's superstitious dislike of mourning attire, he wasn't surprised.

"Well, I'll contrive to get out more," she replied politely, aware his concern was motivated by affection and not inclined to argue with him. But in truth, she rarely went out anymore. "You look fit," she declared, intent on transferring the subject away from herself.

Nikki was tanned and lean, dressed in chamois hunting clothes. "Thank you. Come, sit. Militza must see you go out more," he added with a significant look at Stefan's aunt. "She tells me you're strong enough to hear what I have to say." He was abrupt but pressed by an internal urgency, his thoughts absorbed by his quest. He found he didn't have patience for socializing.