Enchantment

7

Conspiracies

King Matfei had wished more than once that his father had not happened to be king when the edict came out of Kiev that from now on only a son of a king, or a grandson through a daughter, could inherit a throne among the East Slavs. He and his father knew this law for what it was, a means for the king of the Rus' to steal the thrones of their neighbors, one by one. They were patient, these Rus'. They had come out of the north, blond men with goods to sell and savage punishment to mete out on those who would not let them travel, buy, and sell as they would. Where the Rus' traded, they settled; where they settled, before long they ruled. And now they would wait, generation after generation, for a king to be childless or daughtered, and there they would be, ready to pounce, ready to claim that the high king of Kiev had the right to appoint a new king—invariably a kinsman of his own—or to succeed to the throne himself.

Matfei's father had been elected to lead his people in war, as kings always were in the old days among the Slavs. If someone else had been king when the law changed, then Matfei probably would not have been elected. Too many other men in Taina were stronger, bolder, wiser. When the new law made him king without election, at first he feared resentment. But the people had been oddly quiescent about the change. As if they were rather proud of having a hereditary king instead of an elected one. Then Father Lukas came along, proclaiming that God chose which men would be born to kings and which to peasants, and therefore it was God who made men kings, giving each king exactly the sons—or the lack of sons—that he deserved. Thus the matter was settled.

Or would have been, had Matfei's sons not died in infancy. Murdered, some claimed, through sorcery. But Matfei had seen their weak bodies, how small they were: one that turned blue and died, having never breathed; one with a twisted spine. Maybe they were killed by sorcery. Or maybe they were just born weak or deformed. Matfei didn't understand such things. It seemed to him that much of what was called sorcery was merely the working of nature. A cow died—did anyone think that cows would live forever?—yet the whispers invariably arose about some old woman gone simple with age who mumbled something that might have been a curse, or some jealous neighbor who might hold a grudge. And so there arose stories about his sons. Nothing was proved.

Though with Baba Yaga as an enemy, the rumors were not hard to believe. Ill things happened before she married King Brat and came to Kiev to infect the world with her malice. She could not be blamed for every bad thing that came along since Brat lost his kingdom and she ended up in Pryava, so perilously close to Taina. But once Baba Yaga had set her heart on getting Taina, the bad things that happened were dire indeed. The failure of the copper mine. Two years of drought. And then his daughter, ensorceled and spirited away, hidden from all eyes until she came home with...

If Matfei hadn't been king, he wouldn't be standing here now in the practice yard of the fortress, watching this long-limbed stranger make an ass of himself with sword and broadaxe alike, knowing that he was appointed by some cruel fate—or merciless enemy—to be the father of Matfei's grandchildren and the leader of his people in war.

O Jesus, what did I do to offend thee, that thou breathedst life into this pile of twigs and sentest it to me as a man? Mikola Mozhaiski, have you no better care for your land than this, to shame us before our enemies like this? Are the Slavic people so poor in the eyes of all the gods that they are not to be given the power to rule over themselves, but must have foreigners rule over them? Must all the old laws be done away? Must the trickery and nastiness of women become the power of this land, instead of the forthright strength of men?

And yet... it could be worse. At least the boy had a king's heart and felt responsibility keenly. Bad as he was at it, he was trying to learn to use these weapons. He would no doubt do his best. His pathetic, useless, doomed best.

He dressed in women's clothing without a second thought, and said that this was common in the land he came from. And this is what must be the father of my grandsons? Ah, Mikola Mozhaiski, my vanished friend. O Jesus, whom I have chosen as Savior of my people. And thou as well, Holy Mother, whose womb held and nurtured God. Why must I like him, this stranger whose very existence now endangers my people?

Dimitri Pavlovich, obedient to Matfei's request that he put aside his anger, was trying to teach Ivan how to absorb a broadaxe blow with his shield and twist the weapon out of the enemy's hands. But Ivan would have none of it. He kept leaping backward, dodging the axe entirely, then whacking Dimitri on the back with his practice sword. Oh, how clever it seemed to Ivan, this dancing. But what Ivan did not understand, could not grasp in his feeble foreign mind, was that in battle there would be a man to the left and right of his enemy, who would see the sudden gap in the line as Ivan leapt back, and he would never have a chance to leap forward again to make his clever blow. Instead, he would have to retreat farther yet, and if the men to either side of him did not fight his battle for him, soon the enemy would come pouring through the gap, and the day would be lost. A man had to stand his ground, giving no inch to the enemy, bearing his blows and striking back harder, forcing the other man to give way. This seemed beyond Ivan's comprehension.

Was this how Jesus Christ rewarded Matfei for letting Father Lukas set up his church and baptize all who wanted? For changing his own name to a Christian one? What kind of god was Jesus Christ, after all? A god who let himself be crucified, and his leading followers stoned to death or burned or crucified. And all those dead and tortured saints. It did not bode well for the future of his followers.

Crucifixion would look merciful compared to what Baba Yaga did to those who opposed her. Hadn't they seen it when, newly widowed, she had the leading men of the Drevlianians impaled or flayed alive as her way of answering their king's marriage proposal? The one survivor, blinded and castrated, was sent back to report what his eyes had last seen, and to give his own genitals to King Mal in a little box as her answer to his words of love. What would she do to Matfei's people when, with Ivan as the war leader, her troops easily overpowered them?

Something had to happen to free them of this burden. Some miraculous deliverance. For instance, Ivan's glorious martyrdom for the sake of Christ. Provided that he had first fathered a son on Katerina.

That was the most important matter. That Katerina be filled with a son, so the succession would be secure and Baba Yaga would lose her legal pretext. After that, Ivan would be quite expendable.

Not that Matfei would do anything himself to harm the man who would be, after all, his son-in-law. What kind of monster was he, even to think of such a thing? God forgive me, he murmured to himself. It is for thee alone, in thy infinite mercy, to deliver us from this burden.

Finally, Ivan understood the instructions and tried to stand his ground. But when Dimitri's blow landed on the twig-man's shield, it knocked him down, shield and all. In his fury at the man's utter inability, Dimitri took a step forward to offer the killing blow, though of course he would make it fall to the side. But Ivan chose that moment to bring his booted foot up under Dimitri's kilt and into his crotch, causing him to fall writhing on the ground.

Matfei jumped to his feet, roaring. "It's a practice, you bone-headed fool!"

"Tell him that!" cried Ivan. "He was about to kill me!"

"It's a practice axe!" shouted Matfei. "It has no edge!"

"It's heavy! It would have crushed my head!"

"He wasn't going to hit you!"

"How was I supposed to know that?"

"Because he's a true knight and you're betrothed to the princess! That's why! Now look at what you've done."

"Isn't that what I should do to an enemy?"

"An enemy will be wearing a solid steel plate with a point, to catch and impale the shin of any man who tries such a maneuver in battle. What, you think you're the first to come up with the idea of kicking a man in the groin?"

"Nobody told me," said Ivan.

"Why should I have to tell you? Do you think your enemy is going to be as stupid as you?"

"You all grew up fighting and talking about fighting. In my homeland we used none of these things."

"Your homeland must be a nation of women!" cried Matfei.

Only after saying it did he realize that, apart from his voice, there was no sound on the practice field. Everyone had stopped to hear the argument. And now these words, this deadly insult, had shamed Ivan in front of all the men and given credence to the rumors that had been flying for the past week, about how readily Ivan had put on women's clothes. Rumors that Katerina had reluctantly confirmed to King Matfei in private.

"One soldier of my land," said Ivan icily, "could kill every man here in five minutes or less."

Keeping his voice down, Matfei nevertheless could not leave such an empty boast unanswered. "Then why don't you show us this amazing process?"

"Our soldiers use weapons that you don't have."

"Make one for us! Or show us how it's made, and we'll make our own!"

"It takes better iron than you have. No smith could make it here."

"Easy to brag about what you cannot show us."

"Easy for you to shame a man who comes from another land, with different customs. If you came to my land, you would be as unskilled as I am, in the things that matter to my people."

"Perhaps that's so," said Matfei, keeping his voice low but unable to hide the fury he felt. "But I am not in your land. You are in mine. You are engaged to my daughter. My people need you to lead them into war."

"I agree with Dimitri—I'll never make a soldier," said Ivan. "As for your daughter, I release her from—"

Matfei punched him in the mouth before he could utter the words that would have opened the door for Baba Yaga to come in. Ivan staggered backward, holding his face. Blood poured from his nose and his lip, which had torn against his teeth.

"What did you do that for?" the boy asked, gasping.

"Are you a fool?" said Matfei. "If you break off this engagement, then all is lost!"

"All of what is lost?" asked Ivan. "All my blood? How's that for a beginning?"

"Are you such a coward and a weakling?" Making no effort to hide his scorn, King Matfei turned to help Dimitri rise from the ground. Dimitri leaned on Matfei's shoulder and limped gingerly to a grassy place where he could lie down to recover.

"Father Matfei," said Dimitri—for he had earned the right in battle to address his king so familiarly—"I have borne many things for you, and will bear anything you ask, but I cannot teach this fool."

"For God's sake, try," whispered Matfei.

Dimitri spoke more quietly. "He goes to it with a will, but he hasn't the strength in him. Everyone has seen how badly he fights. No one would follow him."

"For my sake, try," said Matfei. He helped Dimitri stretch out on the grass. Their heads were very close together.

"You should have let me marry her," whispered Dimitri.

"The Widow's curse—"

"Hang the old bitch," said Dimitri. "If the people chose, they'd choose me."

"We face a witch," said Matfei. "She has powers your sword can't fight. Maybe God sent this boy to us for a reason."

"What can he possibly do that we can't do better? He knows nothing. He can do nothing."

How could Matfei argue with him? All he had was a faint hope—hope in a miracle. "Maybe we'll be lucky," said Matfei, speaking the thought that had crossed his mind earlier. "Maybe this boy will father a child and die."

He spoke wryly, meaning it as a joke. But the moment the words passed his lips, Matfei knew he had crossed a chasm, and there was no turning back. For Dimitri had heard the king speak of Ivan's death as a desirable thing and even name the time when it would be most convenient for it to occur. No matter how Matfei might protest in the future that he never meant it, he could not have found a clearer way to sentence young Ivan to death. If not Dimitri himself, some other man would find a way to rid the kingdom of this interloper. And his blood would be on Matfei's hands.

"I didn't mean it," Matfei said, knowing that Dimitri would not believe him.

"I know you were joking," said Dimitri. But it was in his eyes that he did not take it as a joke. "Still, we need an heir, and soon. There are ways to make sure that a child is conceived at once, and that it's a boy."

"And have the baby born ensorceled?" asked Matfei. "We might as well hand the baby over to the Widow herself. I don't want my grandsons to die as my sons did."

"I thought you didn't believe that it was magic killed your boys."

"I believed that seeking vengeance for it would do no good. Nor will killing this young man. He saved my daughter from the witch. He saved your sister."

"And no harm will come to him from me," said Dimitri. "You can be sure that if he dies, it will be an accident."

"An accident that you and I will do all in our power to prevent," said Matfei.

"Our vigilance will be marvelously complete," said Dimitri. "At least until we know the baby is a boy."

Matfei could see now that no matter how sincerely he might plead with Dimitri to spare the stranger's life, he and all the knights of the druzhina would know that Matfei's original reasoning was sound: Only with a child conceived and the father dead would the kingdom be better off than it was before Ivan rescued the princess.

Matfei rose to his feet and returned to where Ivan was whacking futilely against the wooden dummy with his practice axe. Oh, Lord Jesus, what have I done? thought Matfei. The boy has a king's heart. He's trying to learn. God brought him to us. And I have betrayed him and God.

Or have I? My people matter more than this one young man. It was my mouth that asked for him to die, and I am the one who will stand before the judgment bar of Christ to answer for it. Let the sin be on my head. If Jesus damns me for saving the life and freedom of my people at the cost of one life, then I'll damn him back. Let me burn in hell—I'll burn there knowing that I did what my people needed, and that is the duty of a king, however he might pay for it later. I, too, have a king's heart.

I'm no King David, killing a man so he can hide the shame of stealing his wife. When I kill, it is for the good of others.

But I'm still a murderer, Matfei told himself, refusing to hide from what he had done. I have killed with my mouth. There is no mercy in me. What difference now, between me and Baba Yaga?

There is a difference, something inside him shouted. Please, Jesus. Please, some god, some wise man, show me what it is.

Sergei didn't like the way people were talking about Ivan. Mother swore that she told no one but Father Lukas in confession, and Sergei knew that Father Lukas never betrayed the secrets he learned that way. Yet the rumor was abroad, that Ivan was a man who dressed in women's clothes. No one quite believed it, or something would have happened already. But no one completely disbelieved the story, either. Not even Sergei.

No, that wasn't so. Sergei knew that Ivan was strange—but it had nothing to do with him prancing around in the princess's hoose, as the old lady had told Mother. Ivan's strangeness was something else. He didn't care about the things that mortal men cared about. With Baba Yaga panting to invade Taina, with a wedding coming up with the beautiful Katerina, with Father Lukas trying to probe his soul, with all of Christianity to learn in a few days, Ivan acted like these things didn't even matter. All he wanted to do was study the manuscripts. And not the Gospels, either. Ivan insisted on studying the working papers, the lexicon that Father Lukas had brought with him, the one written by the hand of Kirill. It was as if Ivan thought Kirill was Christ, as if these papers were a sacred relic. He only touched them by the edges. He refused to let Sergei fold the parchments, or even roll them up. "Store them flat," he said, or tried to say, stammering in his strange language until Sergei finally got what he meant and taught him the right words. He was careful with the Gospels, too. But he wasn't any more careful with them, and they contained the words of Christ. It made no sense.

But nothing about Ivan made sense. When they were supposed to be studying Christian doctrine, Ivan would listen for a few minutes, then begin to ask Sergei to tell stories. And not stories about Jesus and the apostles, either. He wanted stories about witches and sorcerers. About Baba Yaga. About Mikola Mozhaiski. About kings and queens, about lost children and wolves in the woods. Stories that grandparents told to frighten children on winter nights. Stories that mothers told to frighten their children into staying indoors at night, or to keep them from wandering into the woods by day.

And now, in the middle of Sergei's feeble effort to tell him that bad rumors were being spread about him, Ivan interrupts as if he didn't even care, and he says, "I need you to write these down."

"Write what down?"

"These stories. The story you just told me. About Ilya of Murom."

"But... these stories aren't true. At least, not in the same way that the Gospels are true."

Ivan shook his head. "But the stories are important. In my land, these stories are different. Changed. Lots of things about Mongols and Cossacks and tsars."

These were words that Sergei didn't understand. Except tsar, which was the title of one of the high officials of the Roman Empire, but why would stories about tsars have anything to do with Ilya of Murom?

"So your version of the story, it's older," said Ivan. "It's... clean."

"But why write it down? Everybody knows this story."

"Not in my land."

"Then you write it down."

"I can't."

"You write faster than I do."

"Sergei, if I write it down, people in my land will think I made it up. But if it's in your hand—"

"Father Lukas says I have a bad hand. He won't let me copy anything on parchment, he says it's a waste of precious lambskin."

"But I say your handwriting is excellent for what I need. Not fine copywork like the Gospels. But a simple telling of the tale. It does need to be parchment, though."

"Where will I get parchment? I have no flock of sheep, and if I did, I'd need the skins for clothing, not for writing."

"If I get you the parchment, you'll write the stories?"

"If Father Lukas lets me."

"He won't let you," said Ivan.

"If you already know that, how can you ask me to do what my priest forbids?"

"He hasn't forbidden it."

"But you said—"

"I haven't asked him."

"Then he might allow me."

"Do you think he would?"

"No."

"Then why ask?"

"You mean... keep it secret from him?"

"Yes."

"Lie to him?"

"Has he ever asked you whether you write down the stories of the villagers?"

"No."

"Why would he now?"

"I can't think why he would."

"Then you'll never have to lie to him."

Sergei thought about this. "It doesn't feel honest."

"These aren't Father Lukas's stories," said Ivan. His voice grew intense now, though softer. "These are your stories, and the stories of your family, your neighbors, your friends."

"I don't have any friends," said Sergei. "They've never liked me."

"But it's your village."

Sergei shrugged.

"I can tell you, Sergei, that unless you write these stories down, the priests will have it all their way. Only the histories they want to write, and never the true histories, either. Always twisted to make every king look like a Christian, and every defeat look like a victory. Your people will be forgotten. No one will even know there was a land called Taina. But if you write these stories, I can promise you that your land will never be forgotten, these stories will live forever."

"But I'm with the Church now, Ivan," said Sergei. "You can't ask me to oppose the writings of the priests."

"Not oppose them, Sergei. What you write won't erase a single word of their chronicles."

"Where would you get parchment?"

Ivan laughed. "I'm betrothed to the princess. Do you think I can't get parchment if I want it?"

Sergei could hardly understand what he meant. "What difference would that make? Being betrothed to the princess?"

"I can ask the king for parchment. He won't deny me."

"But... where would he get parchment?"

Ivan looked as if he couldn't comprehend the idea. Yet the words were simple, weren't they?

"He's the king," said Ivan at last.

Sergei couldn't think of what this might mean.

"He can do what he wants," said Ivan, explaining.

"We can all do what we want," said Sergei. "But killing a lamb or a kid and using the skin for parchment—you have to have something very important to write."

"Even the king?"

Now it began to dawn on Sergei what Ivan was assuming. "Oh. In your land, kings can do whatever they want. Like the emperor in Constantinople."

"We don't have kings."

"Then why don't enemies invade your land and take it away?"

Ivan laughed, but there was no mirth in it. "We have armies. We just don't have kings."

"If you have armies," said Sergei, "why are you such a bad soldier?"

Ivan looked surprised.

"Well, that can't be kept secret," said Sergei. "Everyone sees how you can hardly swing a sword. How thin you are."

"I was never in the army," said Ivan. "There are many people in my land, and only some of them become soldiers. I was... one who reads."

"And that's all?"

"And sometimes I write about what I read."

"So you copy manuscripts?"

"No, I write about them. I describe them."

"Why would you do that? If someone can't read the manuscript, how can they read your description of the manuscript?"

"It doesn't matter what I did in my land. I can't go back, can I?"

"Which is why it makes no sense for me to write these stories. You can't take them to your land, so how will they get there?"

"We'll bury them."

"Bury them?"

"Bury them very carefully. In a way that will keep them dry. So that someone can dig them up in a thousand years."

"I don't understand anything you say," said Sergei. "Burying a parchment in my land won't get it any closer to yours."

"You'd be surprised."

"Unless your land is underground," said Sergei.

Ivan laughed. "No, Sergei, I'm not from hell."

"Then from where? Heaven?"

"I'm no angel, either."

"I wondered. Your skin is so smooth. You have hands like a baby."

Ivan looked at his hands as if for the first time. "I wish I could fly, though. That would be convenient."

"You're not a saint, either?"

Ivan rolled his eyes.

Sergei realized something, having seen Ivan look at his smooth hands. "You've never even helped with a harvest, have you?"

"No. In my land we... we have... I don't know the words. But very, very few people help with the harvest."

"It must take them forever to scythe the grain."

"No, no, you see, the scythes run by themselves."

"So you're a sorcerer!"

"No, it's not sorcery at all, it's more like... when you pull a cart, you don't have to pull each wheel, you pull the whole cart and the wheels come with it. We just have better carts. They pull themselves."

Sergei had to laugh. "Now you're just lying to me to make fun of me."

"No," said Ivan. "My land is strange, though, compared to here. But another way of looking at it is, Taina is strange to me. All the years I was growing up, it never occurred to me that there might come a day when my life might depend on how I handled a broadsword or a battleaxe."

"We're alike, though," said Sergei. "I'm a terrible soldier. All I'm good for is reading and writing. And washing up."

"And I can't even do that."

"You can, though. Write all you want."

"No," said Ivan. "I make my letters wrong."

"I saw you make some letters I'd never seen before. Like this one."

With his finger, Sergei drew the letter III on the table. At once Ivan seized his hands and held them tightly.

"Don't ever make that letter again," he said.

"How could I? I don't even know how it sounds."

"Just don't use it. You shouldn't. It would change everything. It would make the record unclean. Forget it. Put it out of your mind."

Sergei nodded his understanding. So... he had inadvertently learned a powerful rune from a land of sorcery. He would have to keep this in mind. Someday he might have to use this rune. For despite Ivan's warning, Sergei was not about to forget something that was so dangerous and disturbing. In all his life, Sergei had never known how to do anything that would frighten anyone. It was an interesting feeling. He liked it.

For a while, Katerina was able to fool herself into believing that things were going well—that Ivan was earning the respect of the knights and other men by his hard work on the practice field, and that Ivan's obvious decency and concern for others, as exemplified by saving Lybed from choking, had won the hearts, or at least the patience, of the women of Taina. But gradually she realized that the absence of negative comment about Ivan did not mean there was approval or even tolerance. Instead, it meant that no one was talking to her about Ivan. It was a bad sign, not a good one. People had never shut her out before. She had assumed that she could bring him into the community; instead, he might well be dragging her out.

But what point was there in discussing this with Ivan? She couldn't think of a thing he could do more than he was already doing. She knew he didn't want to become a Christian, but he was preparing to do it. She knew he had no interest in being king, let alone soldiering, but he was working hard at it every day. If she told him her fears, it would only discourage him, and she'd have to listen to more insistence that she take him back to the enchanted place and lead him across the bridge so he could go home.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to be in his place, cut off from family, trapped in a situation not of her devising. In fact, that's precisely what had happened to her when she was chased by the bear and ensorceled into sleeping for however many months or centuries it was. But of course she had slept through it, while Ivan had to be awake through his time of estrangement. And her exile had ended with return. Would his?

It was to avoid such a conversation with him that she found herself avoiding any conversation with him apart from dinnertime, when nothing private could be discussed. But this silence between them could not go on forever, she knew; she was not surprised when, one afternoon in her father's house, she heard him in the great room, asking a slave which bedchamber was hers.

The slave was no doubt trying to guess which would cause more trouble, to tell or not to tell, and then would have to decide whether to make trouble or not, which was probably the more difficult decision. Slaves were so untrustworthy. And yet life would be impossible if you had to do all that work yourself. When would she have time to look after the people, if she had to spend her time down at the river, washing clothes, or out in the kitchen, preparing dinner?

Anyway, she spared the slave the burden of making a choice. "In here," she called out to Ivan.

He actually stopped to thank the slave, as if the girl had done anything or even meant to do anything to help him. He was still a stranger, would always be a stranger.

Whatever it was he wanted to talk about, she knew she didn't want to discuss it with him. So she preempted him by leaping to a conclusion she knew was false. "I hope you're not thinking of claiming some privilege of intimacy because we're betrothed."

He did not rise to the bait. "Your purity is safe. I only came to ask how I could get some parchment."

Why would he come to her for a parchment? Did he think she had a secret hoard of lambskins and kidskins? "Why would you ask me? Father Lukas asks for the skin of a lamb when he needs something to write on. If he doesn't claim the skin, then it's used by others."

"I know that," said Ivan. "Sergei explained that."

"Then why did you come to me?"

"So you could tell me how I could go about getting a parchment. Or tell me who could teach me how to make parchment out of lambskin."

"And why would you waste time on something like that?" It would hardly raise the knights' opinion of him, if he spent hours parching lambskin.

"Because there's something I want to write down."

Was he serious? "Do you have any idea what you're talking about?" she asked.

"I know how to read and write, if that's what you mean."

"You weren't brought here to be a cleric! Father Lukas will find his own young men and teach them. Like Sergei, who has no other usefulness. But you... to spend your hours writing or making parchment..."

He had been ingratiating up to now, but his temper had apparently been stretched too thin. "What am I supposed to do, then?" he demanded. "Spend all day in the practice field, hearing Dimitri taunt me and watching all the others snicker behind their hands?"

"It takes time, I know."

"It takes years to put on that kind of muscle. I ache all over, and while I'm getting better, I'm a long way from good. It won't hurt anybody if I spend a little time doing things that I'm actually good at."

"But you aren't good at making parchment, if you don't even know how."

"I want to write something."

"Use birchbark. You just peel it off the trees and soak it and press it flat."

"Birchbark doesn't last."

"Neither will you, and neither will Taina, if you don't work at soldiering."

"I know how long it takes to train my body. I've been running all my life, but I was training for the decathlon—"

"The what?"

"A contest. Running, jumping, throwing the... spear. The discus. The... stone. It took years of training until I was competitive. Someday, a few years from now, I might be good enough with the sword to hold my own with the best of them. But not next week or next month."

"But they have to see you trying. They have to see you getting better at it."

"They refuse to see it," said Ivan. "No matter what I do, they laugh. Fine, that's their privilege. But if you think they're going to respect me more by watching me fail, day after day—"

"You're giving up?"

"I just want to write something down!"

She didn't like him speaking to her with such exasperation. As if she were an unreasonable child. "Don't shout at me."

"And what will you do to punish me? I'm already in hell."

"Taina is the most beautiful place, filled with good people!"

"They may be good to you, but all I get from them is resentment and scorn. I didn't ask to be here. You demanded that I stay, for your sake and for theirs. Well, I stayed, and I've tried to do what you asked—no, what you commanded—but now that it's clear that I'm not going to live up to your expectations, let's just agree it was a mistake and let me go home!"

"No," cried Katerina.

Calmly Ivan began removing his clothing.

"What are you doing!" she demanded. "I told you not to expect to claim any marital privileges—"

Ivan stopped. "I don't want your body, I want mine. I'm here as a slave, so I'm going to dress like one."

"You're not a slave! You're my fiancé."

"No, I'm sorry, that's simply a lie. A fiancé would be your equal, a man you loved, a man who was going to be your husband. But you don't even speak to me, you avoid me and everyone sees it. I'm shamed after every meal, when you go off and leave without a word to me. I'm not here because you want to marry me, I'm here because I'm the tool you need to hold on to your kingdom. I'm like a milk cow, only I'm not giving enough milk. So what do we call a man who is forced to work against his will at tasks he hates, to benefit someone else while he's treated with contempt by everyone around him? If he's a captive and he can't escape and has no hope of ever getting his freedom? What is he, but a slave?"

"I didn't choose you," said Katerina. "You chose yourself."

"So my mistake was saving you, is that it?" he said softly. "You'd rather have waited another thousand years asleep than be stuck with me, is that it?"

"We could have waited a few months more."

"You should have posted a sign," said Ivan. "Don't fight the bear and kiss the princess unless you're very good with sword and battleaxe. Oh, but wait, a sign would have been useless. The kind of man you want wouldn't know how to read anyway."

He said it with such scorn that she realized: He feels contempt for people who can't read.

"I know how to read," she said. "But I haven't yet thought of a way to make the Widow's army disappear by reading them to death."

"In my land, it is Taina that has disappeared. Utterly forgotten, because no one wrote a word about it. I want to write the story of this land, and hide it somewhere that someone will find it in the future, and read it, and know that this land existed, and who you were. I'm trying to save Taina from oblivion."

"You fool!" she said. "We don't want to be remembered! We want to survive."

"And I'm no help to you, am I," he said coldly. "So take me back. Let me cross that bridge to my own world."

She could see how miserable his situation was. And how little she had done to make it better. But she could not let him leave. Not yet. "As soon as we're married."

"How can I say this without breaking your heart, Fair Princess? I don't want to marry you."

This was the conversation she had been trying to avoid. These were the words which, if he acted on them, would ruin everything. She flailed about for some way to turn him away from this decision. "If you didn't want to marry me, you shouldn't have asked me."

"There was a bear," he reminded her. "And you told me to ask you."

"You asked me and I said yes. It was an oath. Are you a man of no honor?"

"Ask the knights who mock me, the women who laugh at me behind their hands. I have no honor here for keeping my word."

"A man like you has no word to keep," she said.

She regretted the words as soon as she said them. His face closed off, as if he had moved beyond anger. "You know nothing at all about men like me." He turned and left her room.

She wanted to call after him, to say, "There are no men like you!" But she would not shout like that in her father's house. Besides, she wasn't even sure what she meant by it. That he was not a man? No. He was a man, she knew that, a man to be admired in many ways—just not in the ways that mattered to the people, not when judging a man who might be their king.

What a stupid, miserable way to start a marriage. Where was the respect she owed to her husband? The slaves had heard the argument, and no doubt dozens of others as well. Word would pass through Taina and the people would scorn Ivan even more, for the princess had set the example of showing him disrespect under her father's roof.

Why had she behaved that way? All her life she had cultivated iron self-control, to keep silence when others shouted, to say nothing when others rattled on, to be content with stillness even when no one else was speaking, and all eyes turned to her. But this man provoked her beyond endurance.

And why is that? she wondered. Why does he have such power over me? I should despise him for being a weakling when I needed a kingly man. But instead I'm angry because he doesn't... because he doesn't love Taina as much as I do. Because he doesn't want to be king. Because he doesn't want to be my husband.

Because I want him to respect me and love me, and all he wants is to get away from me and my kingdom. The one man in the world who wouldn't like to be married to someone like me, and he's the one God brings to me. A husband who thinks he's being treated like a slave.

And he's right. He's a captive here, and instead of trying to win his heart, his loyalty, I've hidden from him. As a result, I have only his fear and resentment. I've worried because the people are not accepting him as their future king, but I haven't accepted him, and he has not accepted me. I've said the words of the promise, but haven't acted as if he were going to be my husband. But he has kept his word, doing his best to accomplish all the tasks I set for him.

Who is the one without honor?

Dimitri's scorn for Ivan on the practice field and her own disrespectful attitude were surely playing into Baba Yaga's hands. Indeed, that was the sort of thing that Baba Yaga loved to do—to sow seeds of discontent and dissension among her enemies, so no one trusted anyone, so people hated those they should follow and clung to those they should hate.

Katerina resolved that she would from this moment forward treat Ivan with respect. Where he was ignorant, she would simply teach him, without letting anyone see her surprise or dismay at what he did not know. And she would do her best to help others see his virtues.

She would talk to Dimitri, too, and persuade him to work more respectfully with Ivan. Though how she would soften that tough old bird, she had no idea. Dimitri had been a figure of awe in her life since her childhood. When her aunts had told her about Baba Yaga's curse, Katerina asked them, "Who will save me from my enchanted sleep?" and Tetka Retiva answered, "The strongest knight," and Tetka Moika said, "The wisest man," and Tetka Tila said, "The purest love." Katerina thought the purest love must have been her mother, who was dead, and the wisest man was her father the king, or perhaps Father Lukas, neither of whom, upon waking her, could wed her.

But the strongest knight, everyone knew, was Dimitri, and so she half-expected to find herself betrothed to him one day. That was the perspective from which she viewed him for many years, each year growing more sure that it would be a very hard thing to have Dimitri as a husband, for he acted bravely, and never delayed for such irrelevancies as thinking through the consequences or wondering if he had the right to decide. She had expected, when the bear chased her to the stone where she lay down weeping, knowing she would sleep either forever or until her future husband awoke her, that if she ever saw another human face again, it would be Dimitri's, bending over her, his lips still cool from the kiss that wakened her, ready to speak the question to which her answer had to be yes.

And in that moment, she had prayed, O Mikola, O Tetka Tila, O Lord Jesus, O Holy Mother, let the purest love awaken me, or the wisest man, but not the strongest knight. Then she realized that she had prayed to Jesus third, not first, and when she spoke to the Holy Mother, it was not so much the Blessed Virgin as her own dead mother to whom she prayed. No doubt this was damnation, and she sank down into sleep, into despair.

Then she awoke, and it was this strange boy bending over her, who was not a knight at all, and not terribly wise either, as far as she could tell. But perhaps his was the purest love.

But she did not have his love. She had only his promise, and that given under duress, and kept reluctantly. Lord Jesus, did I offend thee with my prayer? Forgive me, and let me have the husband who will save Taina from the witch. Even if it is Dimitri. I will do whatever my people need me to do.

And yet this thought also, this prayer at the back of her mind: Art thou not the God of miracles? Then is there not some miracle thou canst bring about to turn this boy Ivan into a knight, and somehow make him wise, and a man, and let him love me?

Ivan sat alone in the tiring-room. Father Lukas was out among the people, doing whatever it is that priests do. Sergei was cleaning out the priest's chamber pot and then washing the priest's clothes, hopefully not in the same water. Ah, how Ivan longed for the twentieth century at times like these. The lush melodies of a flushing toilet—the rush, the swish, the gurgle, the gulp, and then the lingering aftertones, the whispering hiss, and then... silence! The glorious rhythm of a washing machine with an out-of-balance load, knocking and pounding its way across a laundry-room floor! The bucolic life had lost its charms for him somewhere between the fleas and the itchy woolen clothing.

His little plan to record the stories of the people of Taina had come to nothing, foiled by the simple fact that cheap paper hadn't been invented yet, or at least hadn't yet reached Europe, while the birchbark they used for jotting notes on decayed about as quickly as toilet paper. Ivan wracked his brains to remember how and when papermaking had made its way west from China. Would it be three or four centuries he'd have to wait?

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, my ass. American ingenuity amounted to squat in this place. These people needed a very specific kind of man, and he wasn't it. Katerina was beautiful, but she hated him, which didn't bode well for the marriage. And Ivan simply wasn't interested in living the life that this time and place offered.

There must be other men of his temperament here. What did they do? The men who had no wish to do violence. The men who wanted to learn, to know the answers, to solve mysteries. The men who quickly lost interest in any physical activity that didn't let them think their own thoughts.

The men who hadn't yet grown up.

That's what Ivan had to face about himself. The life he had chosen was a cocoon. Surrounded by a web of old manuscripts and scholarly papers, he would achieve tenure, publish frequently, teach a group of carefully selected graduate students, be treated like a celebrity by the handful of people who had the faintest idea who he was, and go to his grave deluded into thinking he had achieved greatness while in fact he had stayed in school all his life. Where was the plunge into the unknown? Where was the man who would stand against all comers to protect his family, his people?

Easy to say that he was lucky enough to live in peaceful times, that he was never called to war. He was called now, wasn't he? And here he was slacking, avoiding practice with the weapons of this time and place. He was stronger than he let them see; finding himself unskilled when he was used to being a contender, resenting their scorn, he had backed off, had stopped trying. Like a kid who would only try when he knew he could win.

It wasn't childish to follow in the footsteps of a distinguished father, was it?

But his father hadn't stayed in the cocoon. Years before anyone guessed that the Soviet Union would collapse, Ivan's father had decided he had to get his family out. So he declared himself a religious man, let them slice him up, lost his home and his job, risked years of deprivation and harassment, and finally won, taking his family to a new land of freedom. But to do it, Father had given up the idea of ever teaching another class in his native tongue, of ever walking the streets of his native city. Afterward the world changed, so some of these things might be possible again—but Father hadn't known it would happen.

Compared to that kind of risk, what am I? I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed—I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say that Cinderella had to like being queen, or that Jack got to choose whether to marry the king's daughter or whatever it was that happened to him after he killed the dragon or the giant or whatever the hell he did? When Father got the family to Austria, he didn't say, "Never mind, too scary, let's go back."

OK, so Father couldn't turn back. Neither can I. I've got to do it, so maybe I should get my ass in gear and do it for real.

Ivan stood up, closed the book of the Gospels, and set it aside. Then he took the single parchment sheet of the lexicon and turned it over and set it on top of the other pages Father Lukas had been given by Saint Kirill... The lexicon was blank on the other side. And most of the other sheets also had at least some space on the back. Room for a lot of writing, if it were small enough. Room for Sergei to do all that Ivan wanted him to do.

Except for one small problem. How could Sergei hide it from Father Lukas, if it was written on Father Lukas's own papers?

By dinnertime, Ivan had come up with an answer. As usual, King Matfei listened carefully to the concerns of the boyars before giving the rest of the meal over to the singing of a minstrel slave who had recently been given to him as payment of a debt from another kingdom over the mountains to the west. Ordinarily, Ivan would have listened carefully to the song. But tonight, he leaned to the king and said, "I'm ready to be baptized."

King Matfei raised his eyebrows. "Father Lukas says not."

"Father Lukas judges that I'm not ready to be a priest, and he's right. But am I ready to take the covenant of baptism and confirmation as a Christian? I think so. What more is needed than that I believe in Christ?"

"That's precisely the point on which Father Lukas says you are lacking."

"And I say that I believe well enough for baptism," said Ivan. "Am I a liar, or is he mistaken? I am the only fit judge of what is in my heart, I think."

King Matfei looked off into space, bemused. "A complicated question, now that you put it that way."

"Until I'm married to Katerina," said Ivan, "the kingdom is in danger. What is to stop the Pretender from sending assassins?"

"The high king in Kiev would not allow her to take possession if it were known she had murdered to get the kingdom. More important, though, there are spells that my late wife's sisters added to the curse. If the witch raises a hand against the royal house of Taina, then the curse falls upon the witch herself."

"Until I'm married to Katerina, killing me would not be killing a member of the royal house."

"Then why aren't you already dead?" asked the king, reasonably enough.

"Because she knows what a terrible soldier I am, that no one would follow me into battle. She thinks the marriage would work to her advantage. When I'm discredited completely and married to Katerina, she'll be content."

King Matfei looked at him strangely. "You say this?"

"I am not going to be a terrible soldier forever. I'm going to work very hard until I can wield a sword and be useful in battle."

If King Matfei had an opinion of the likelihood of this ever happening, he kept it to himself.

"If the Widow gets word that I'm improving," Ivan continued, "then it will be in her interest to kill me. I want to be baptized and married. Let's get on with the journey and see where the road takes us."

"Father Lukas won't baptize you until he thinks you're ready."

"I will continue my studies," said Ivan. "In fact, I want to. But let it be here. Let Sergei bring the books and papers into your house and train my mind here, during meals and before bedtime, so I can spend all the daylight hours training my body to be a soldier."

"I'll think about it," said King Matfei.

The next day, Sergei showed up soon after dawn with a dozen parchments and the book of the Gospels in a basket. "Father Lukas is furious," said Sergei. "But your baptism will be day after tomorrow. And here I am, living in the king's house!"

Within moments, Ivan had shown him all the blank spaces on the parchments.

"Write on these? The very parchments written by the hand of Kirill?"

"And then we'll seal them all up and hide them to be found in a thousand years," said Ivan.

"You're serious about this," said Sergei.

"It's the second most important thing I'll ever do here in Taina."

"And what's the most important?"

"I have to learn to be a knight, so I can be a king, so I can be a husband." He did not add aloud the most important point: So I can go back home.

Baba Yaga

Yaga found her husband tearing at a human thigh. It was disgusting, the way he let blood drool onto his fur, making a mess of everything. On the other hand, the ligaments and tendons and veins stretched and popped in interesting ways. It made Yaga wish that Bear hadn't disassembled the body. She liked to see how everything connected with everything else. And Bear absolutely refused to eat humans while they were still alive, with the feeble excuse that when they weren't dead they made too much noise and moved around too much. To Yaga, that was just another proof of Bear's laziness. Godhood was assigned to the most unworthy people.

Still, he was pleasant company, much of the time, and he was more or less permanent—he was the only male she'd ever slept with that she couldn't kill no matter how much she sometimes wanted to. As a result, he stayed around long enough for them to develop something akin to friendship.

"How are you with the broadsword?" Yaga asked her husband. "Or has losing an eye made it impossible for you?"

"Having no thumb makes it impossible for me." He talked with his mouth full, of course. "I've never needed a sword. I knock swords out of men's hands. I bite off the ends of their spears. I roar at them and they shit themselves and run stinking into the woods."

"This bridegroom of Katerina's—you know, the fellow who put your eye out—he didn't shit himself, did he?"

Bear cocked his head to remember. "He ran."

"But not away. I distinctly recall that he ran around and around until he made you stupid. Oh, wait—you started that way."

"We're not in a good mood today, are we, my love?" said Bear.

"He's practicing with the sword. Doing exercises. Hours a day, till he staggers back to Matfei's squalid little hut of a palace and falls asleep. Lifting bags of stones on a yoke to make his thighs and back stronger, directing the fletchers to make light javelins with hard metal points and teaching the boys to throw them. He might make something like a king out of himself after all. He's becoming a nuisance."

"Poor Baba Yaga." Bear let the bone drop on the floor. Later, one of the servants would pick it up and give it to the cook to add to the stew for the prisoners and slaves. Still, it annoyed Yaga that he was so untidy. And sarcastic, too, as he added a little jab. "I thought you said that telling the people he wore a dress would undo him."

"It will," said Yaga, feeling surly but knowing that the dress thing hadn't worked out quite as she hoped. "It still might. But they seem to have let the rumor wash over them. Maybe they're waiting for him to make some stupid mistake, and then they'll say, We knew it all along, after all, he wore a dress."

"Is Queen Yaga learning a bit about human nature?"

"Bestial nature. They scarcely deserve the name of human."

"I'm sure they feel the same about you."

"Nobody thinks of you as human."

"To my enormous relief."

"If this unmanly foreigner becomes a real king, then he's lost his usefulness to me."

Bear finally got it through his head what she was asking. "If you think I'm going to go roaring into Taina and bite his head off, think again. I heard what you said about javelins. This fellow aims projectile weapons far too well."

"Are you a coward?"

"I lost an eye for you already. Must I die for you?"

"You can't die, you fool. You're immortal."

"Yes, well, I thought my eye would grow back, too, but it hasn't."

"You've lost faith in yourself! Isn't that rich? A god who has become a self-atheist!"

"You don't even know what it means to be a god. The burden of it."

"You should have remained a weather god like your father. Taking on a totem only subjected you to the pains of mortality. Without even the release of death."

"The whole father-son thing doesn't have the same meaning in my family," said Bear. "We don't breed true. Weather god was never my option. This people didn't need a sky god. They needed a god to keep winter under control. Like any good king, we respond to the needs of the people. We become what they need us to be."

She understood the thinly veiled criticism of her own kingship. "Did they need you to be a one-eyed cowardly old fart?" She poured him a dish of mead. "To help settle your meal."

He looked at the dish but didn't lap at it immediately. "I should never have let you seduce me," he said.

"I didn't seduce you, I enchanted you. There's a world of difference."

"Bears have no business marrying women. We're unfaithful by nature."

"But you kept your word, you sweet hunk of bear, you."

"Hera let Zeus dally."

"Hera was weak," said Yaga. "She deserved what she got. And in case you're thinking of going about betraying me with other women, I've put a charm on you. Try it and your balls fall off."

"If Hera couldn't do that to Zeus, I doubt you can do it to me. You're not even a goddess."

"Try it and see."

"Don't worry. I'm done with human women."

"Good. Stick to swans and heifers or whatever it was that Zeus had a taste for. Or she-bears. But as far as humans go, you're mine."

"Why this charade of marriage? You only want my power. You don't even think about me except when I come into your room."

"I think about you all the time, my love," she said, pretending to feel hurt.

"I'm not going to go kill that boy, not in the middle of Taina, surrounded by soldiers. He and I will have an accounting about this empty eyesocket of mine, but not now. Certainly not at your behest, my love, since you're the one who sent me into that pit to fight with him."

Yaga silently went back to combing her hair. They both knew, of course, that he would do whatever she told him to do, and if he tried to resist, she could make things very uncomfortable for him. A binding is a binding, and the one who is bound is bound. Anything else was just talk. When the time came, when she really meant it, Bear would kill whomever she wanted dead.

Apparently mistaking her silence for patience, Bear went on. "Do you have any idea how sad it is, to see you comb those few scraggly grey hairs of yours as if they were long luscious tresses? I can see your sallow scalp right through it, the hair's so thin. I've seen bald men with more hair."

She sighed. "I'm combing thick reddish hair tonight. Sorry if you don't love me enough to see that."

"And your dugs hang down to your knees."

"Only when I'm sitting and leaning forward to see into my mirror."

"I don't have eyes enough to waste them looking at lies."

"Since the truth can never be known," said Yaga, "a wise woman learns to become a connoisseur of lies, choosing only the best and most satisfying to surround herself with. I sink into my lies like featherbeds, and they keep me safe and warm." She got up and danced a little through the room.

"So you plan to kill the boy yourself?" asked Bear. "Won't that cost you any chance for the throne?"

She shrugged and kept on dancing. "I'll find other hands to do it for me. I always do."

She began to sing a melody. The rhythm of it had nothing to do with her twirling steps. Bear lost interest. He lay down on the floor and fell asleep.

"I've got to find a faster-acting spell," Yaga murmured. "It took you forever to fall asleep."

Bear opened his one eye. "I didn't take your damn potion," he growled. "The stuff stank so bad I could hardly tell that it was supposed to be mead in the dish. You can't poison a bear, you silly bitch."

"I'll try it again sometime when you have a cold!"

Bear snarled at her and went to sleep again. Or seemed to.

Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be, thought Yaga. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around.

She looked into her mirror again, but this time she shook into her palm a bit of dust out of a bag made from a ram's scrotum. Then she blew across her hand. The dust flew toward the mirror, then clung to it as if it had been glued there.

"Bring me the sleeping warrior," she whispered to the mirror, careful not to blow any dust from the mirror's surface.

The face of King Matfei appeared in the mirror, shimmering.

"Not the king, the warrior. The mighty Dimitri."

Nothing happened; the mirror went blank.

He must not be asleep, the fool.

Quickly she pulled a small wooden carving of a man's head from a box near her dressing table. She anointed it with a dab of bearfat—a supply she replenished from time to time without particularly mentioning what it was to her husband—and then whispered the name of Dimitri over it, naming it so that whatever she did to it would be done to Dimitri. Then, laying it on the table, she poured out a thin trickle of sleeping sand onto the head.

Within only a few minutes—but it felt like tedious eternities—the mirror shimmered again, no longer empty. There lay Dimitri asleep. At this time of night he should have been asleep long ago. But perhaps he had lain awake with worry about the kingdom he served. Well he might.

Yaga reached out, her fingers extended toward the mirror. Then she plunged her hand into the glass. It hurt; it always hurt to have part of her body in one place, and part in another. But one had to endure many hard things in order to achieve great ends. With her hand she toyed with a lock of Dimitri's shaggy hair, then caressed his hairy cheek.

"Do not wake, O great one. Do not wake, O king who is yet to be. The interloper will marry thy bride, to fulfill the terms of the curse, but in the moment of the marriage, he is the heir. Therefore all is fulfilled. Wait thou not for the conception of a child, for such a child would be as weak as the father. Once wedded and bedded, Katerina will hold the kingdom by widow-right, as Baba Yaga did, and her new husband shall be king beside her, and the sons he makes in her body shall inherit after them. Be thou that man, O great one. Thy bright herald tells thee what the Winter God most surely desires of thee."

Then, grimacing, she rose from her stool and plunged her head through the glass. It felt to her as if she had been beheaded, or at least as she imagined such a thing might feel; but even so she managed to put a loving smile on her face and kiss the cheek of the sleeping man. Then, wincing from the pain, she pulled herself back through the mirror, first her head and then her hand.

Slumping down into her stool, she rested a moment, panting. Then she carefully wiped the precious powder from the mirror with a dry cloth. There was no retrieving the powder to use it again on glass, but the cloth was charged with it now, and thus had within it the power to carry any item, like a box and all its contents, across an infinite distance. Baba Yaga was very economical with her spells. Anything that could be reused in any way, she kept. It made for a cluttered house, but it was worth it.

She scooped the sleeping sand from the table and restored it to the little box in which she kept it. Then she took the wooden head, used a bit more of the bearfat, and named it as No Man, so it would be ready for the next use.

In the morning, Dimitri would wake up with a clear memory of a bright and terrible dream. A divine herald came to me, that's what he would whisper to himself. A bright messenger, so beautiful of face. The smell of the Winter Bear on her. And she kissed me.

Don't laugh at what my mirror shows, Bear, until you understand just how and when I do the showing.