Chapter VI: The Three Ways

One day Ilyá set off on his good horse for a ride. He rode a long way through the open plain till he came to the Burning Stone. Three lengths beyond the stone there were three paths leading this way and that from the Burning Stone, and upon the stone was written:

“Who goes by the first path will be killed.
Who goes by the second path will find marriage.
Who goes by the third path will become rich.”

He stopped to consider:

“By which path shall I go? Why should a bold hero want to be rich? Why should I want to marry? I will take the way to be killed.”

So he took that way and rode on for three hours, and he rode three hundred miles, and then he came to a hill, and at that hill, that high hill, brigands began to come up, and there came up forty thousand brigands. They began to defy our bold hero, and the brave Cossack spoke and hailed them:

“Come, you forty thousand robbers! What will you take from me, the bold hero? I have not many chests of uncounted gold, I have no beautiful young wives, I have no fine clothes, I have nothing but a good horse, a good horse which cost three hundred; on the horse are trappings worth five hundred; on myself a hero’s gear worth a cool thousand.”

When he drew his iron mace of three tons weight, he began to defy the robbers, and he killed the forty thousand robbers.

Then the bold hero turned back, and when he reached the Burning Stone he altered the writing thus:

“If thou goest by this road thou wilt not be killed.”

And he said:

“I shall go by the road to marriage.”

So Ilyá took the second path and rode on for just three hundred miles. He rode on always through the plain, that open plain, through the open plain, the green meadow, through those open plains and through green meadows till he came to a wonderful and a strange thing. If we called it a town it would be too small; if we called it a village it would seem too large, but there stood a palace built of white stone. When Ilyá reached the broad palace yard there came a most beautiful young princess from the palace of white stone. She came to meet the brave hero and took him by his white hands, kissed him with her sweet lips, led him into the white stone palace, and made him sit down at the oaken table, where a feast was spread. Ilyá ate and drank in plenty, and stuffed himself the whole day long till evening, when he rose up from the oaken table and spoke to the princess and said:

“O thou enchanting and beautiful lady, where are thy warm sleeping chambers? Where are the beds of carved wood? Where are the soft feather beds? I am an old man and weary, and I would fain sleep.”

And the princess led him to a warm chamber, but the old man stood by the bed and shook his head and said:

“Much have I travelled through Holy Russia, but so strange a thing have I never seen. It seems to me that that bed is a trap.”

Suddenly he seized the princess by her white hands and threw her against the brick wall against which the bed stood. The bed of carved wood turned over and the princess fell down into a deep dungeon below.

The old Cossack walked out of the palace, and outside he found the door of the deep dungeon. Then he took the golden keys, went on and unlocked the deep dungeon and set free many goodly youths and brave, and many strong and mighty heroes, but the beautiful and wicked enchantress was killed. And all the rich treasure which Ilyá found there in that white stone palace he bestowed on the good youths and brave, and on the strong and mighty heroes. But that white stone palace he gave to the flames.

And then our bold hero rode back again, and when he came to the Burning Stone he again altered the graven letters and wrote:

“By that way I went—I was not married.”

“I go,” said he, “by the third path, where one will become rich.”

And on he rode for three hours, three hundred miles he rode, and again he rode through the plain, the open plain, the meadow, the green meadow, to a place where there were sunk deep pits in the ground, all piled up with red gold—red gold, pure silver, and fine round pearls.

Ilyá looked at the gold and said:

“What has a bold hero to do with these riches, with this treasure of much uncounted gold?”

He began to consider: and then he took enough of this treasure in this plain, this open plain, to build an abbey for prayers to God. He built a church, a minster church, ordered the singing of psalms and the ringing of bells, and then Ilyá said:

“Let him whose treasure it was go and look for it!”

And then the bold hero turned back again; again he rode to that Burning Stone; again he wrote beneath that inscription:

“Though I rode by that path, I became not rich.”