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  Kremlins

  By K.L. Conger

  Table of Contents

  Citadels of Fire

  Bastions of Blood

  Dungeons of Destiny

  Citadels of Fire

  A novel

  By K.L. Conger

  Foreword by Dr. Larae Larkin

  Cover Art by Clarissa Yeo, Yocla Designs

  First Trade Paperback Edition: May 2014

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Info

  Free Starter Library

  Dedication

  Historical Note

  Foreward

  Ivan Grozny

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Author's Note

  Also by L.K. Hill

  Connect With the Author

  To my dad—my first reader, most ardent

  supporter, and biggest cheerleader.

  People who don’t believe in heroes

  have obviously never met him.

  I love you, Dad!

  Historical Note

  The history in this book is based on true events. Ivan the Terrible is one of the most well-known and notorious leaders in Russian history. He was the first leader of unified Russia to crown himself Tsar, and his marriage resulted in the elevation of the Romanov family—the descendants of whom would remain royalty for many years, culminating in the notorious fate of Nicholas and his family during the Bolshevik revolution just prior to World War I.

  As a deep respecter of history, I’ve tried to stay true to it as much as I could. It’s important to note, however, that I have collapsed the timeline a bit. Things in this book happen more quickly than they did in the actual history, so the dates may not always line up correctly. I’ve taken these liberties in order to serve the story, though I did my best to remain true to the events and characters as they are described in the annals.

  LK Hill

  Foreword

  Liesel Hill’s latest novel, Book I of the Kremlin trilogy, Citadel of Fire, is an intriguing and gripping story of life in Muscovite Russia under the reign of Ivan IV (Terrible). She was a student of mine in Russian history classes at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, where she was an exceptional scholar and was thoroughly fascinated by tsarist history. Since her graduation Liesel has kept in touch with me on her research and progress. We have discussed politics, cultural customs, religion, as well as the historical dynamics of the imperial regimes of the Muscovite monarchs and, in particular, Ivan the Terrible.

  In her research for this novel, I have never failed to be impressed with her attention to detail, such as customs and social mores that have played such a significant role in Russian life. From the lowest classes to the nobility and royal family, Liesel has described her characters, their social roles, their aspirations and restrictions in vivid detail. She has given life and reality to a country and era that has, to a large extent, remained a mystery. The lives and regimes of early Russia have primarily been recorded only by the Orthodox clergy. Very little of the lives, misfortunes, struggles and local culture of the peasants, city workers, and lower classes have been revealed. Not until the nineteenth century were inroads made into the lives of the common masses.

  With the era of glasnost and perestroika under the Gorbachev government the veil of secrecy has been lifted. Through openness and some democratic reforms early history, politics and social conditions have been exposed and made available to the world. Misperceptions and misunderstandings have now been replaced by truth and reality.

  Liesel’s novel intermingles several primary actors from an orphan girl to boyars, to Ivan the Terrible. However, the story centers primarily around Inga, the young orphan who becomes a house servant in the estate of the royal family just shortly before the birth of the future tsar, Ivan IV. Her youth against this backdrop takes many turns, showing the various customs, class distinctions, superstitions, and political intrigue. She meets a young man of mixed parentage, Taras, who has fled England to live in Russia with relatives there. Taras meets and falls in love with Inga, and throughout the remainder of the saga will play a major role in Ivan’s military officer corps.

  Although Inga and the other servants demonstrate their loyalty to the royal family, and in particular Ivan, Taras recognizes the potential brutality of the young tsar. The intrigues throughout the story reveal the precarious lifestyle that all who serves the emperor is subject to. While considered a man of God, Ivan’s more brutal nature emerges. Yet, the prevailing opinion among courtiers, citizenry, and commoners is that his divinity is vital to the security of the state.

  The author describes in vivid detail the punishments inflicted on disloyal citizens and the great battle as the Russians under Ivan’s leadership defeat the Tatars in the Battle of Kazan.

  This brutality from Ivan’s time to the Soviet era and even to the present illustrates a common thread in Russian power, that of absolute rule, centralized control, and blind subordination to the powers, whether Tsar or Commissar.

  Dr. LaRae Larkin

  Associate Professor–Weber State University

  Russian History

  East European History

  Ivan Grozny

  Lightning strikes the Kremlin Wall

  A baby wails at birth

  Learns survival, climbs through intrigue, hides in deceit

  The infant cries.

  Village-pillage; innocent-ravage

  Young animals on spikes

  The child laughs.

  Love. Matrimony.

  Tranquility is almost skin deep...

  Prologue

  Life is a mystical and tragic thing.

  It is a journey often full of fear, when it ought to be full of hope. It’s fascinating to look back on your life and feel as though most of it was a precursor to the rest of it; to what was always supposed to be. It’s tragic to look with hindsight at the most pivotal crossroads of your life and realize you made the wrong decision, that you could have had so much more happiness. But that would have taken true courage. And true courage is something most people from my homeland lack. It is not their fault. It’s simply the way they are brought up to be. It is because of the Wall. It is what happens when people put up walls to protect themselves and end up h
iding behind them—keeping themselves in, rather than the enemy out.

  Let me introduce myself. My name is Inga. I do not know what my born surname is, only that it is common. I am not a member of one of the powerful boyar families. I have taken to calling myself Inga Russovna because I am so much a product of my mother country. You see, I was born in Moscow, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin Wall.

  I was born beside it, have lived inside it, and now must escape from it.

  I only know about my birth because it was told to me by the first parent I remember: a drunken father. My earliest memories find me at his side as a child.

  My father, between mouthfuls of vodka, told me that my mother died because I was born. He remembered that the market booths had been moved from the field across from Red Square to the ice of the Volga River. The ice was only solid enough to hold such weight in the dead of winter; but winter’s heart or no, we Russians are not deterred. We venture out to market in our floor-length winter coats and fur shapkas. We’ve adapted to the icy chill of Muscovy.

  On the day I was born, though my mother’s belly was quite swollen, they ventured out to the market. My parents were poor, and so did not have servants to perform such tasks for them. They tarried near the walls of the Kremlin, looking at the wares of the booths. And then the pains came. She birthed me on the very spot. It was quick, once it began, and the blood made a bright stain on the snow. My mother grew a fever and died two days later, without ever having looked upon me. My father always talked of how much blood there was.

  “Inga,” he would say, “you were born surrounded by blood.”

  So much blood. My blood. My mother’s blood. Blood in the snow.

  My father told me this story often—nearly every time I managed to catch his attention. He told it in great detail—the blood, my mother’s screams, my mother’s death, the cold of the winter—as though he wanted me to memorize it, to understand how absolutely her death had been my doing. Of course I was only a child. I did not understand, but the story stuck with me and, to a great extent, defined me.

  Little did my father know that not many years hence, there would be more blood on the ground than snow. Perhaps then he would not make such a grand thing of a little blood at childbirth.

  I have often wondered about my father. Before my birth and my mother’s death, was he a good husband? Did he always drink? Did he beat my mother as he later hit me? I don’t know. Perhaps the story was not even true. Perhaps he was not even my father. I do not know, nor will I ever.

  If I begin to explore questions of this nature too deeply, I will lose myself in an abyss I may never come out of. A wise man once told me that this is what happens to mad men—they lose themselves, and then their sanity, and they never recover.

  Regardless, I must assume the story my father told me is true. I do not believe he was lying. I choose to believe that he was a good man once, and that my mother’s death corrupted him. I hated my father for many years for what he did to me. But at that time, I had never known real grief or loneliness. Once I did, I began to see what my father really was: a broken, empty man who did the best he could and always came up short. I wonder if he drank himself to death in the years after I left him, or if he died later in the great bloodbath that was to come. I don’t know, but I cannot judge him for his actions.

  Now, near the end of my life, I do not want to imagine the hardships he must have endured. I believe, having endured many of my own, that I understand him better. I understand the pleasing prospect a dark bottle can have. It can seem the only way to dull the unbearable pain of despair in the dark places of the world. Not that I condone it. I am not ready to turn my back on God just yet. But he was. He did, years before I can remember. So, by the time I was old enough to remember, I was already only a shadow to him.

  This is my story. The story of a servant girl in a Russian palace and the things I have witnessed. Some of the things I have not seen I have received first hand accounts of, and I include them for the reader’s understanding.

  I ask that the reader take in all these pages, reserving judgment until the end. At that time, the reader may take any conclusions he or she wishes from my story, for by then I will be gone. What you, dear reader, do with what you read will be of as little value to me as my tiny life was to the Kremlin.

  Chapter 1

  AUGUST 1530

  "More vodka!”

  A fist pounded the table above; six-year-old Inga shuddered, curling into a ball beneath it. She’d been scrambling around on all fours for hours, trying to snatch falling scraps from the tables of the filthy tavern, but few fell. Two large dogs belonging to the tavern owner lay in the corner. When scraps did fall, the dogs were swifter and meaner than Inga, so they ate better than she did.

  “You’ll have no more drink until I see some coin,” the tavern keeper’s wife barked. “You owe for two rounds already.”

  Hunger gnawed at Inga’s belly so terribly that it ached. Papa acted mean when he drank too much. Now he'd run out of money, which always meant trouble. Minutes went by with Papa glaring at his empty cup, and Inga could stand it no longer. She crawled out from under the table and got to her feet. Her father didn’t notice.

  She tapped him on the knee. He didn’t look up at her, so she did it again. She must have tapped him ten times before he moved. When he did, he struck her across the face. Inga flew eight feet across the room and crashed into an empty chair. The pain from the chair was dull compared to the ache in her cheek where he’d backhanded her.

  Several of the tavern’s patrons looked up. When they realized what was happening, they turned away, leaving Inga all but alone with her father. Inga gazed up into her father’s eyes. Surprise registered on his stone-planed face, as though he hadn’t realized what he'd done until he caught sight of her on the floor. For a glimmer of an instant, Inga saw pity in his eyes.

  She had an oft-lived fantasy that came alive for a moment in her mind. In it, her father’s eyes moistened and he lifted her into his lap, gently holding her against his chest. He apologized for his harshness, and then got her something to eat. Watching her father stare at her now, she wanted that fantasy to come true so much that she could feel the warmth of his embrace against her cold, skinny arms. Her hands and lower lip shook. Surely he would scoop her up at any moment. And then . . . he turned and went back to his drink.

  Cold, hungry, and alone, Inga pulled her knees into her chest and cried.

  A moment later, her father murmured about getting some more coin. He stood and left the tavern, which Inga thought odd. Most taverns she visited with her father enforced strict rules.

  Minutes passed and Papa did not come back. The tavern owner’s wife sneered at Inga, so she crawled under the nearest table to wait for Papa to return.

  “You should not have let him leave,” the woman said sharply.

  “He said he would return with more coin,” the tavern owner said.

  “But he hasn’t yet,” his wife shot back. “If he’s not back in an hour, take it out of his flesh.”

  “He’s not here,” the man said. “How will I find him?”

  “His little whelp is still here. Take it from her if he doesn’t return—flesh of his flesh.”

  Inga didn’t know what they were talking about. As the minutes passed, she grew tired and lay down on the floor. She awakened sometime later at a rude tugging on her ankle. She gasped as something dragged her out from under the table. The dogs grew excited, their booming barks filled her ears.

  The tavern owner dragged her across the filthy floor and out the door. Her head thudded against stone as he dragged her down several steps into a dark alley behind the tavern. He dropped Inga in a heap.

  Before she could do more than sit up, he unfastened his leather belt and swung it hard across her face. Inga screamed. A second blow, hard on the heels of the first, snapped her mouth shut. Blow after great whaling blow rained down on her arms, bare legs, stomach, back, and head. The beating went on for what felt like
hours. After a while, the tavern owner used not only his belt but his fists, elbows, and boots to beat what her father owed out of her.

  This is what life is, Inga thought. To be cold, hungry, and hurting.

  Her body became numb to the blows, and Inga shrank into herself. She wished for death. She wished for an end. No one in the world would know or care what happened to her in this alley. Existence was too much to bear, so she longed for the deep quiet of the earth. Perhaps becoming one with the earth would bring her to her mother.

  As sweet, relieving darkness closed around the edges of her vision, and hope for the end rose in her heaving chest, a high-pitched voice cut through the commotion. To Inga, it seemed to come from miles away.

  “Excuse me, sir. Would you stop?” a voice said. A woman’s voice, though it sounded rough enough not to be afraid of the tavern keeper. “Why are you beating this child?”

  “Her father ran out on his bill,” the tavern keeper said, his voice deep and menacing.

  “I see.”

  Silence met Inga's ears for a time. Without the strike of the leather against her body, the cold began to seep into Inga’s bones. It was more unpleasant than the beating had been. It made her aches and pains, both physical and otherwise, harder to hide from.

  The woman’s voice broke the silence again. “What is the amount?”

  He gave an amount that Inga couldn’t comprehend. Again, a long silence. She did not understand what was taking so long. Why couldn’t the woman leave and let the man finish her? An hour before, Inga would have reached out to the woman pathetically for help and understanding, but father had abandoned her. She lay like a dead dog in the snow.

  “Is she dead?” The woman’s voice sounded businesslike. The man poked Inga in the ribs with his toe. Inga's splintered bones shift under the solid toe of his boot. She groaned.

  “Not yet.” He sounded remorseful about that fact.

  The woman sighed. “Will you be obliged to desist, sir, if I compensate you for her debt?” The tavern owner gave no answer. The woman clicked her tongue. “Will you stop beating her and allow me to take her away if I pay what her father owes?”