In 735, when Pantsar Iluyanka XXV was bringing his realm into the New Hope, the learned monks and students of the Three-Fingered Research Monastery, Bezdez, were accused of defying the new spiritual authorities and studying unclean powers. The prince of Zembla at the time, Boleslav Poplar-Down Yavorov, great-grandson of the monastery’s founder, Prince Gleb Tverdokhlebov, spoke in defence of Bezdez’s scholars, only to join them in the dock. After a swift trial, the accused were sentenced to the ‘fortunate lot’. They were to draw twigs from the judge’s broom: whoever drew a long twig won the honour of execution by beheading; those who drew short ones were subjected to whatever agonising form of execution was most fashionable at the time. That year seemed an unlucky one for the men of Zembla. Every one of them drew a short twig, and the fashion that year was to set dogs on the condemned in the city circus. So it would have ended, had Stavr XI not dared intervene for his vassal prince. It took considerable effort to settle the affair so that the monks were exiled to the Zimalayan Mountains, while Boleslav Poplar-Down was stripped of all his estates, profitable enterprises, and residence in Guernica. He was left only the little coastal castle of Yavros, with strict orders to remain there for twenty years on pain of being set upon by dogs.
Thus the blood of the Yavorovs, after wandering a little way, returned to its source. For it was from a fisherman’s hut on Yavros Cliff that the first prince of the Yavorov line had come: Kormach the Well-Laden Table. In those days, when years and centuries were not yet counted, he fought beside Stavr Swiftwing against the sirens, proved himself a valiant warrior and faithful comrade, and earned a prince’s maple crown from Swiftwing’s own great hands.
On the site of the fisherman’s half-dugout they built a large ancestral house with a tower. Until Bezdez was built, Yavros remained the princely line’s nest. Later, the house, walls, and bridge were rebuilt many times. Prince Mitry Duck-Hunter had begun the last major rebuilding. He also wanted to remodel the tower in the fashion of his day, but its mighty stonework proved so strong, and so tenaciously bound to the cliff’s rocky foundations, that they decided to content themselves with renewing the roof.
It is also said that Yavros Cliff contains a passage into the boundless siren caves, through which one can reach the foot of Bezdez and even the other shore of the Children’s Sea, at the Crematorium baths. But if there is an entrance, behind which cupboard and beneath which carpet its secret door lies hidden remains a Yavorov family secret.
