The Winter of the Witch Page 18

  “It might be your undoing.”

  She shook her head. “It might. But I am not going to abandon my family. Will you come with me?”

  “I have said you are not alone, Vasya, and I meant it,” he said. But he sounded unhappy.

  She managed the ghost of a smile. “You are not alone either. By all means, let us continue repeating it until one of us believes it.” Briskly, she managed to say without tremor, “If I go out there, will the village try to kill me?”

  “No,” said Morozko, and then he smiled. “But a legend might be born.”

  She flushed. But when he extended a hand, she took it.

  The village had indeed gathered outside the bathhouse. They drew back when the door opened. Their eyes roved from Vasya to Morozko, hand-fast, disheveled.

  Yelena stood at the front of the crowd, shoulder to shoulder with the man who had tried to save her. She flinched when Morozko turned to her. It was to Yelena that the frost-demon spoke, although the whole village heard. “Forgive me,” he said.

  She looked shocked. Then she gathered her dignity and bowed. “It was your right. But—” She looked more closely at his face. “You are not the same,” she whispered.

  Just as Vasya had seen the years gone from his eyes, this woman could sense the weight of their return. “No,” said Morozko. “I have been saved from forgetfulness.” He glanced at Vasya and spoke so that the whole village heard. “I loved her, and a curse made me forget. But she came for me and broke the curse and now I must go. My blessing on you all, this winter.”

  Whispers of wonder, even joy. Yelena smiled. “We are doubly blessed,” she said to Vasya. “Sister.” She had a gift in her hands: a magnificent long cloak, wolf without, rabbit within. She gave it to Vasya, embraced her. “Thank you,” she whispered. “May I have your blessing on my firstborn?”

  “Health and long life,” said Vasya, a little awkwardly. “For your child, joy in love, and a brave death, a long time from now.”

  Zimnyaya Koroleva, they said. The winter-queen. It frightened her. She tried to compose her features.

  Morozko stood beside her, deceptively calm, but she could sense the feeling rushing between him and his people: a pull like a current. His eyes were a deep and astonishing blue. Perhaps he wished even now to go back, to take his place in the feasting, to feed forever on this worship.

  But if he doubted his course, he did not let it show on his face.

  Vasya was relieved when all the people turned at the sound of hoofbeats. Delight bloomed on a dozen faces. Two horses came flowing over the palisade, one white and one gold. They cut through the crowd, and trotted up to the two of them. Morozko, without a word, leaned his forehead against the neck of the white mare. The horse put her head around and lipped at his sleeve. Pain shot through Vasya, seeing it. “I forgot you too,” he said to the mare, low. “Forgive me.”

  The white mare shoved him with her head, ears back. I don’t know why any of us waited for you. It was very dark.

  Pozhar scraped a hoof in the snow in obvious agreement.

  “You waited as well,” Vasya said to her, surprised.

  Pozhar bit Vasya on the arm and stamped. I am not waiting again.

  Vasya said, rubbing the new bruise, “I am glad to see you, lady.”

  Morozko said, in some wonder, “She has never taken a rider willingly in all the years of her life.”

  “She has not taken one now,” said Vasya hastily. “But she helped to guide me here. I am grateful.” She scratched Pozhar’s withers. Pozhar, despite herself, leaned into the scratches. You took too long, said the mare again, just to show she didn’t in any way enjoy being coddled, and stamped again.

  Vasya’s new cloak lay heavy on her shoulders. “Farewell,” she said to the people. They were round-eyed with wonder. “They think they see a miracle,” Vasya said, low, to Morozko. “It doesn’t feel like one.”

  “And yet,” he replied, “a girl alone rescued the winter-king from forgetfulness and stole him away with magic horses. That is miracle enough for one Midwinter.” Vasya found herself smiling as he vaulted to the white mare’s back.

  Before he could offer—or not offer—to take her up before him, she said firmly, “I am going to walk. I came here on my own feet, after all.” Walking had been a slogging nightmare of deep snow without snowshoes, but she didn’t say that.

  The pale eyes considered her. Vasya wished he wouldn’t. He so obviously saw past her pride—not wanting to be carried away across his saddlebow—to the deeper emotion. The shock of Solovey breaking, falling, was still too raw in memory. It felt wrong now to ride away in triumph.

  “Very well,” he said, and surprised her by dismounting.

  “You needn’t,” she said. The two horses’ bodies shielded them from the crowd. “You can’t mean to march out of the village like a cowherd? It is beneath your dignity.”

  “I have seen uncounted dead,” he returned coolly. “Touched them, sent them on. But I have never done anything to remember them. I can walk now with you, because you cannot ride Solovey beside me. Because he was brave, and he is gone.”

  She hadn’t wept for Solovey. Not properly. She had dreamed of him, waked screaming for him to run, felt his absence as a dull, poisonous ache. But she hadn’t wept, except for a few quelled tears after she nearly slew the mushroom-spirit. Now she felt the tears starting, stinging. Lightly, Morozko touched his finger to the first, as it ran down to her jaw. It froze at his touch, fell away.

  Somehow the act of walking out of that midnight village, while the horses paced beside them, drove home Solovey’s loss in a way that none of the last days’ shocks had. When they had passed the palisade and gone back into the winter forest, Vasya buried her face in the white mare’s mane and she cried all the dammed-up tears that one night in Moscow had left inside her.

  The mare stood patiently, blowing warm air onto her hands, and Morozko waited, silent, except that once, he laid cool fingers on the back of her neck.

  When at last her tears quieted, she shook her head, wiped her running nose, and tried to think clearly. “We have to go back to Moscow.” Her voice was hoarse.

  “As you say,” he said. He still didn’t look happy about it. But he didn’t object again.

  If we are going all the way back to Moscow, the white mare put in unexpectedly, then Vasya must get on my back. I can carry both of you. It will be quicker.

  Vasya had her lips open in a refusal, but then she noticed Morozko’s expression. “She will not let you say no,” he said mildly. “And she is right. You will only exhaust yourself, walking. It is you who must hold Moscow in your mind; if I guide us, it will be winter when we arrive.”

  At least they were out of sight of the village now. Vasya vaulted to the mare’s back and Morozko got on behind her. The white mare was more finely built than Solovey, but the way she moved reminded her— Trying not to think of the bay stallion, Vasya looked down at Morozko’s hand, lying relaxed on his knee, remembered instead his hands on her skin, his hair coarse and cold, tumbled dark across her breasts.

  She shivered at the memory and pushed it away too. They had stolen those hours in Midnight; now they must think only of outmaneuvering a clever and implacable enemy.

  But— For distraction, she forced herself to ask a question whose answer she feared. “To bind the Bear—must I sacrifice myself as my father did?”

  Morozko did not immediately say no. Vasya began to feel a little sick to her stomach. The mare set off lightly through the snow; more snow drifted down from the sky. Vasya wondered if he called it down in his distress, if it were involuntary, like the beat of a heart. “You promised you’d not lie to me again,” said Vasya.

  “I will not,” said Morozko. “It is not so simple as exchanging your life for his binding, the two things interchangeable. Your life is not tied to the Bear’s liberty; you are not j
ust a—token in our war.”

  She waited.

  “But I gave him power over me,” said Morozko, “when I yielded up my freedom. My twin and I will not be equals in a fight, now.” The words came out gratingly. “Summer is his season. I do not know how to bind him, except with the power of a life freely given, or a trick—”

  Pozhar said suddenly, What about the golden thing? The mare had drifted close enough to catch their conversation.

  Vasya blinked. “What golden thing?”

  The mare threw her head up and down. The golden thing the sorcerer made! When I wore it, I couldn’t fly. I had to do what he said. It is powerful, that thing.

  Vasya and Morozko looked at each other. “Kaschei’s golden bridle,” said Vasya, slowly. “If it bound her—might it bind your brother?”

  “Perhaps,” said the winter-king, brows drawn together.

  “It was in Moscow,” said Vasya, speaking faster and faster in her excitement. “In the stable, Dmitrii Ivanovich’s stable. I pulled it off her head and threw it down, the night Moscow burned. Is it still in the palace? Perhaps it melted in the fire.”

  “It would not have melted,” Morozko said. “There is a chance.” She could not see his face, but his hand on his knee closed slowly into a fist.

  Vasya, without thinking, leaned over and scratched Pozhar’s neck with delight. “Thank you,” she said. The mare tolerated it a moment before she sidled away.

  19.

  Allies

  SUMMER CAME WITH UNNATURAL SUDDENNESS, fell on Moscow like a conquering army. Fires broke out in the forest, so that the city was palled with smoke and no one could see the sun. Folk went mad from the heat; drowned themselves in the river seeking coolness, or simply dropped where they stood, scarlet-faced, bodies dewed with clammy sweat.

  The rats came with the warmth, creeping out of the merchant-boats while men unloaded silver and cloth and forged iron for the sticky, sweltering markets of Moscow. They thrived in the smother, drawn to the reek of Moscow’s middens.

  The first folk to fall sick lived in the posad: the airless, crowded huts by the river. They began to cough, to sweat, and then to shiver. Then the smooth swellings showed, at throat and groin, and then black spots.

  Plague. The word rippled through the city. Moscow had seen plague before. Dmitrii’s uncle Semyon had died of it, with his wife and his sons in one terrible summer.

  “Close up the houses of the sick,” said Dmitrii to the captain of his guard. “They are not to go out—no, not even to go to church. If a priest can be found to bless them, let the priest go in, but that is all. Tell the guards at the city-gate; anyone who seems ill is not allowed within the walls.” Folk still whispered in hushed tones of the death of Dmitrii’s uncle: dying swollen like a tick, black-spotted, his own attendants afraid to come near him.

  The man nodded, but he was frowning. “What?” Dmitrii demanded. The night of the Tatar attack had decimated Dmitrii’s city guard. In the aftermath of the riot and Vasya’s burning, he’d built it up again, larger than before, but they were still inexperienced.

  “This sickness is the curse of God, Gosudar,” said the captain. “Surely it is only right that men be allowed to go and pray? All the people’s prayers together may yet reach the ears of the Almighty.”

  “It is a curse that flies from man to man,” said Dmitrii. “What are the walls of Moscow for if not to keep out evil?”

  One of his boyars there in his anteroom said, “Forgive me, Gosudar, but—”

  Dmitrii turned, scowling. “Can I not give orders without debate from half the city?” Ordinarily he humored his boyars. They were mostly older than he, and had ensured that he had a throne to inherit when he came of age. But the shocking heat sapped his strength and brought on a sick, weary anger. He’d had no word from either of his cousins. The Prince of Serpukhov had taken all the silver Muscovy could muster, and had gone south to plead their case before the temnik Mamai. Sasha was supposed to be bringing back Father Sergei. But Sasha had not returned, and reports came out of the south that Mamai was still gathering up his ulus, as though he’d never heard Vladimir’s message at all.

  “The people are afraid,” said the boyar carefully. “Thrice have the dead come walking since the season turned. Now this? If you shut the gates of Moscow and deny church to the sick, I do not know what they will do. Already there is much talk that the city is cursed.”

  Dmitrii understood war, and the managing of men, but curses were outside his experience. “I will take thought for the comfort of the city,” he said. “But we are not cursed.” In his own heart, though, Dmitrii wasn’t sure. He wanted Father Sergei’s advice, but the old monk was not there. So instead, grudgingly, the Grand Prince turned to his steward. “Send for Father Konstantin.”

  * * *

  “THE FAIR-HAIRED PRINCE IS no fool,” said the Bear. “But he is young. He has sent a messenger for you. When you go to him, you must convince him to let you give service in the cathedral. Call the people together and pray for rain or salvation or whatever it is men ask of their gods in this age. But call them together.”

  Konstantin was alone in the scriptorium of the Archangel, wearing only the lightest of cassocks; sweat dewed his forehead, his upper lip. “I am painting,” he said. He turned a pot of color in the light. His colors lay before him like a string of jewels—some were actually made from precious stones. At Lesnaya Zemlya, he had made his colors from bark and berries and leaves. Now anxious boyars showered him with lapis for his blues and jasper for his reds. They paid the finest silversmiths in Moscow to make icon-covers for him, of hammered silver, studded with pearls.

  The third time dead things came whispering through the streets, it had taken the whole night to drive them off: first one, then another, and finally a third. “It cannot seem to be too easy,” the Bear had told him afterward, when Konstantin had wakened screaming from a dream of dead faces. “Do you think the defeat of a single child-upyr would have been enough to win over all Moscow, peasant and boyar? Drink wine, man of God, and do not fear the darkness. Have I not done all I promised?”

  “Every last thing,” Konstantin had said miserably, shivering in his cooling sweat. He was to be made bishop. He had been granted property commensurate with his dignity. The people of Moscow worshipped him with wild-eyed fervor. But that did not help him in the night, when he dreamed dead hands, reaching.

  Now, in the scriptorium, Konstantin turned away from his wooden panel, found the devil standing just behind him. His breath left him silently. He could never get used to the demon’s presence. The beast knew his thoughts, waked him from nightmares, whispered advice in his ear. Konstantin would never be free of him.

  Perhaps I don’t wish to be, Konstantin thought in his more clearheaded moments. Always, when he met the devil’s single eye, the creature stared steadily back.

  The beast saw him.

  Konstantin had waited to hear the voice of God for so long, but God was silent.

  This devil never stopped talking.

  Nothing would quiet Konstantin’s nightmares, though. He’d tried drinking mead, to thicken his sleep, but the honey-wine only made his head ache. Finally, in desperation, Konstantin asked the monks for brushes and wooden panels, for oil and water and pigment, and set himself to writing icons. When he painted, his soul seemed to exist only in his eye and hand; his mind went quiet.

  “I can see you are painting,” said the Bear, with an edge. “In a monastery, alone. Why? I thought you wanted earthly glories, man of God.”

  Konstantin swept his arm at the image on the panel. “I have my earthly glories. And this? Is it not glorious too?” His voice was thick with bitter irony: the icon painted by a man without faith.

  The Bear peered over Konstantin’s shoulder. “That is a strange picture,” he said. His thick finger went out to trace the image.

  The image was of Saint Pet
er. He was dark-haired and wild-eyed, hands and feet streaming blood, his eyes turned blindly to heaven, where angels waited. But the angels had eyes as flat and inimical as the swords in their hands. The host welcoming the apostle to heaven looked more like an army holding the gates. Peter had not the serene look of a saint. His eyes saw, his hands gestured, expressive. He was as alive as Konstantin’s gift, and the raw, wretched hunger the priest could not uproot from his soul, could make him.

  “It is very beautiful,” said the Bear. His finger traced over the lines without quite touching; he looked almost perplexed. “How do you make it live—so? You have not magic.”

  “I don’t know,” said Konstantin. “My hands move without me. What do you know of beauty, monster?”

  “More than you,” said the Bear. “I have lived longer and seen more. I can make dead things live, but only in mockery of the living. This—is something else.”

  Was that wonder, in that sardonic, single eye? Konstantin couldn’t be sure.

  The Bear reached out and turned the icon’s wooden panel to the wall. “You still must go and give service in the cathedral. Have you forgotten our bargain?”

  Konstantin threw his brush aside. “What if I don’t? Will you damn me? Steal my soul? Put me to torture?”

  “No,” said the Bear, and touched his cheek, lightly. “I will disappear, be gone, fling myself back into the fiery pit and leave you all alone.”

  Konstantin stood still. Alone? Alone with his thoughts? Sometimes this devil seemed like the only thing real in this hot, nightmarish world.

  “Don’t leave me,” said Konstantin. It came out a grinding whisper.

  The thick fingers stroked his face with surprising delicacy. Eyes wide and densely blue rose to meet a single gray eye, a face seamed with scars. The Bear breathed his answer into Konstantin’s ear. “I was alone for a hundred lives of men, bound in a clearing beneath an unchanging sky. You can make life with your hands, of a kind I’ve never seen. Why would I ever leave you?”