hearts and minds of the people. Gradually the elders with their belief in the ancient creed died out and the few who remained did not dare to follow it openly or teach it to the younger generation but practiced it alone in secret, hiding it within their hearts with the sad conviction that it would also die and be buried with them.
One of the last known avowed adherents to the old religion in our land of Rus, was Zakhar Berkut. The astonishing fact was that he had carried out this creed from the Scythian monasteries, from the old monk Akenthia. Whether the miraculous old healer had only related to his pupil everything about that ancient religion or whether in his own heart he felt it was closer to the forces of nature and the Truth and was therefore drawn more to it than to the Byzantinic Christianity, the fact was that Zakhar, after his stay within the monastery, brought out with him a greater love for the old religion, vowing to be true to it until death.
He knew about the Glade of Light in his Tukhlia within which long ago the perpetual campfire had died out and where the fragrant balsam fir no longer smouldered before the altars and which the Korchenian priests had denounced as a cursed and evil place. No matter how forsaken this Glade of Light had become, still no one up to that time had dared to touch the image of the sun or the gold leaf with which it was incrusted. That image still shone in the middle of the cave’s ceiling awaiting the mid-day sun to reflect its rays in a thousand beams.
Of his own free will, Zakhar Berkut had taken upon himself the care of this ancient sanctuary. The path which showed itself across its center became well trodden by his feet every spring for more than fifty years. On his annual trips in search of medicinal roots and herbs Zakhar spent a week alone within the Glade of Light in prayer and meditation and after each
168
