The Girl in the Tower

24. Witch

After the horse-race, six of Dmitrii’s men-at-arms took Sasha to the monastery of the Archangel, where they put him in a small cell. There they left him, to walk the circle of his own thoughts. These centered chiefly on his sister, stripped and shamed before all Moscow, but her courage unbowed, her care only for him.

“You will be sent before the bishops,” Andrei told him that night, when supper was brought. Then, darkly, he added, “And put to the question. If you are not slain in the dark; Dmitrii might well come and cut your head off himself. He is that angry. His grandfather would have. I will do what I can, but that is not much.”

“Father, if I die,” said Sasha, putting out a hand just before the door closed, “you must do what you can for my sister. Both my sisters. Olga did what she did unwillingly, and Vasya is—”

“I do not want to know,” Andrei put in acidly, “what your Vasya is. If you were not vowed to God, you would be dead already, for the lies you told on that witch’s behalf.”

“At least send word to Father Sergei,” Sasha said. “He loves me well.”

“That I will do,” said Andrei, but he was already walking away.

THE BELLS RANG OUTSIDE, the footsteps passed, the rumors swirled. Jagged, incoherent prayers rose to Sasha’s lips and broke off again, half-voiced. Dusk had melted into night, and Moscow was drunk and cheerful under a blaze of new-risen moonlight when footsteps sounded in the cloister, and Sasha’s door rattled.

He got to his feet and put his back to a wall, for what good it would do.

The door opened, softly. Andrei’s fat, anxious face showed again in the gap, beard bristling. Beside him stood a sturdy young man in a hood.

An instant of disbelieving stillness, and then Sasha strode forward. “Rodion! What do you here?” For Andrei carried a torch in one anxious hand; by its light Sasha saw his friend’s face worn all to rags, a mark of frostbite on his nose.

Andrei looked angry, exasperated, afraid. “Brother Rodion has come hotfoot from the Lavra,” he said, “with news that concerns the Grand Prince of Moscow.” A pause. “And your friend, Kasyan Lutovich.”

“I have been to Bashnya Kostei,” put in Rodion. He was looking uneasily at his friend, in the cold and narrow cell. “I rode two horses to death to bring you the news.”

Sasha had never seen such a look in Rodion’s face before. “Come in, then.”

He was in no position to command, but they entered the cell without a word and fastened the door behind them.

Rodion proceeded, softly, to tell a tale of dust and bones and horrors in the dark. “It deserves its name,” he finished. “Bashnya Kostei. The Tower of Bones. I do not know what manner of man is this Kasyan Lutovich, but his house is no dwelling for a living man. And if that weren’t enough, it was Kasyan who—”

“Paid Chelubey to pass himself off as an emissary, to get his men into the city,” finished Sasha, thinking with a pang of Vasya. “I know. Rodya—you must leave at once. Do not say you’ve seen me. Go to the Grand Prince. Tell him—”

“What emissary? Kasyan paid those bandits to burn villages,” Rodion interrupted. “I found their agent in Chudovo, their go-between to buy their blades and horses.”

Rodion had been busy. “Hire bandits to burn his own?” Sasha asked sharply. “To profit in girls?”

“I suppose,” said Rodion. His frost-nipped face was grim.

Andrei stood silent near the door.

“Perhaps Kasyan used the burning to lure the Grand Prince out into the wild so that the impostor might slip in the easier,” Sasha said slowly.

Rodion’s glance shifted between Sasha and Andrei. “Am I too late in my errand? I see some evil has touched you already.”

“My own pride,” said Sasha, with a ghost of dark humor. “I misjudged my sister and Kasyan Lutovich both. But enough. Go. I do well enough here. Go and warn—”

A clamor cut him off. There came a flaring of torches, shouts from the gate, the sound of running feet and slamming doors.

“What now?” muttered Andrei. “Fire? Thieves? This is the house of God.”

The noise gained in pitch; voices shouted and answered one another.

Muttering, Andrei heaved himself through the door, turned back to bolt it, then hesitated. He gave Sasha a dark look, not entirely unfriendly. “Do not escape in the meantime, for the love of God.” He bustled off, leaving the door unlocked.

Rodion and Sasha looked at each other. The rushing darkness, flickering between the torches, stippled both their tonsured heads. “You must warn the Grand Prince,” said Sasha. “Then go to my sister, the Princess of Serpukhov. Tell her—”

Rodion said, “Your sister’s child is coming. She has gone into the bathhouse.”

Sasha stilled. “How do you know?”

Rodion bowed his head. “The priest, Konstantin Nikonovich—the one that knew her father at Lesnaya Zemlya—he received a messenger, and left to minister to her. I heard as I was coming.”

Sasha turned away sharply, looking down at hands bruised still from that day’s fighting. They would not call a priest to a laboring woman unless her end was near. That he—that cold-handed creature—should be with my sister dying…“God keep her, in life or death,” said Sasha. But in his eyes was a flash that would have had the prudent Andrei panting back to treble-bolt the door.

The noise without had not diminished. Over the clamor suddenly rose, clear and incongruous, a voice that Sasha knew.

Sasha thrust Rodion aside with a well-placed shoulder and flew down the corridor of the cloister, pursued by his friend.

VASYA STOOD IN THE DOORYARD just behind the gate, wearing a dirty cloak, hands folded before her, looking pale and unlikely in the nighttime monastery. “I must see my brother!” she snapped, her light voice a counterpoint to the angry rumbling all around.

Dmitrii’s guards, who had stayed more for Andrei’s good beer than to watch Sasha’s bolted door, groped blearily for their swords. Some of the monks had torches; all of them looked outraged. Vasya was at the center of a growing crowd.

“She must have climbed the wall,” one of the guards was stammering defensively. He made the sign of the cross. “She appeared out of nowhere, the unnatural bitch.”

The wall had been built more to preserve the sanctity of the monks’ devotions than to keep out the determined. But it was reasonably high. Gathering himself, Sasha stepped into the ring of torchlight.

Cries of startled anger met him, and one of the guards tried to put his sword to Sasha’s throat. Sasha, barely looking, disarmed the man with a twist and an open palm. Then he was holding a sword in his bare fist, and all the monks fell back. The men-at-arms groped for their own blades, but Sasha barely saw them. There was blood on his sister’s hands.

“Why have you come?” he demanded. “What has happened? Is it Olya?”

“She lost her child,” replied Vasya steadily.

Sasha seized his sister’s arm. “Is she alive?”

Vasya made a small, involuntary sound. Sasha remembered that Kasyan had also gripped her there, when he stripped her before the people. He let her go slowly. “Tell me,” he said, forcing calm.

“Yes,” said Vasya fiercely. “Yes, she is alive, and she will live.”

Sasha let out a breath. Great arcs of pain shadowed his sister’s eyes.

Andrei pushed his way through the crowd. “Be silent, all of you,” said the hegumen. “Girl—”

“You must listen to me now, Batyushka,” Vasya interrupted.

“We will not!” replied Andrei in anger, but Sasha said, “Listen to what, Vasya?”

“It is tonight,” she said. “Tonight, when the feasting is at its pitch, and all Moscow is drunk, Kasyan means to kill the Grand Prince, send Moscow into chaos, and emerge triumphant as Grand Prince himself. Dmitrii has no son; Vladimir is in Serpukhov. You must believe me.” She turned suddenly to Rodion, who stood behind the monks. “Brother Rodion,” she said in that clear voice. “You have come quick to Moscow. What brought you in haste? Do you believe me, Brother?”

“Yes,” Rodion said. “I have come from Bashnya Kostei. Perhaps a week ago I would have laughed at you—but now? It is perhaps as you say.”

“She is lying,” said Andrei. “Girls often lie.”

“No,” said Rodion slowly. “No, I do not think she is.”

Sasha asked, “You left Olya to come to me? Surely our sister needs you now.”

“She threw me out,” said Vasya. Her eyes did not leave her brother’s, though her voice caught on the words. “We must warn Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

“I cannot let you go, Brother Aleksandr,” broke in Andrei, desperately. “It is as much as my place and my own life are worth.”

“He certainly cannot,” put in one of the guards, thickly.

The monks looked at each other.

Sasha and Rodion, old campaigners both, looked from the hegumen to each other, to the drunken ring of men. Vasya waited, head tilted, as though she could hear things they could not.

“We will escape,” said Sasha gently and low to Andrei. “I am a dangerous man. Bar the gates, Father. Set a watch.”

Andrei looked long and hard into the younger man’s face. “I never faulted your judgment, before today,” he murmured back. Lower still, he added. “God be with you, my sons.” A pause. Then, grudgingly, “And you, my daughter.”

Vasya smiled at him then. Andrei shut his mouth with a snap. His eyes met Sasha’s. “Take them,” he said aloud. “Put Brother Aleksandr—”

But Sasha already had his sword up; three strokes disarmed the drunken guards and they bulled through the rest. Rodion used the haft of his ax to clear a path, and Vasya stayed sensibly between them. Then they were clear of the ring of people and running down the cloister to the postern-gate that would take them out into Moscow.

THE PAIN FROM VASYA’S blow had blinded Konstantin; for a moment he stood doubled over in the reeking bathhouse, with red lights flashing before his eyes. He heard the door open and slam. Then silence, save for the sounds of weeping in the inner room.

Feeling sick, he opened his eyes.

Vasya was gone. A wispy creature sat studying him with grave curiosity.

Konstantin jerked upright so fast his vision darkened once more.

“You have been touched by the one-eyed god,” the bannik informed the priest. “The eater. So you see us. I haven’t met one of your sort in a long time.” The bannik sat back on his fat, naked, foggy haunch. “Would you like to hear a prophecy?”

Icy sweat broke out over all Konstantin’s body. He stumbled upright. “Back, devil. Get away from me!”

The bannik did not stir. “You will be great among men,” he informed the priest, maliciously. “And you will get only horror of it.”

Konstantin’s sweaty hand lay heavy on the latch. “Great among men?”

The bannik snorted and hurled a ladleful of scalding water. “Get out, poor hungry creature. Get out and leave the dead in peace.” He hurled more water.

Konstantin screamed and half-fell, dripping and burned, out of the bathhouse. Vasya—where was Vasya? She could lift this curse. She could tell him—

But Vasya was gone. He stumbled around the dooryard awhile, searching, but there was no sign of her. Not even footprints. Of course she was gone. Was she not a witch, in league with demons?

Kasyan Lutovich had promised him vengeance, if only he would perform one little task. “Hate the little witches?” Kasyan had said. “Well, your Vasya is not the only witch in Moscow. Do this thing for me. Afterward, I will help you—”

Promises, empty promises. What matter what Kasyan Lutovich said? Men of God did not take vengeance. But…

This is not vengeance, Konstantin thought. Battle against evil, as was good in the sight of God. Besides, if all that Kasyan said was true—then Konstantin might indeed become a bishop. Only first—

Konstantin Nikonovich, with bitterness in his soul, went off toward the tower of the terem. It was almost empty, its fires guttering. Olga’s women were all with the princess, in the bathhouse at his back.

But not quite empty. A black-eyed girl-child slept in the terem, with ghosts in her innocent eyes. Her guard on that tumultuous night was a fond old nurse who would never question his authority as a priest.

SASHA AND RODION AND VASYA paused an instant to breathe in the shadow of the monastery wall. The monastery behind them muttered like a spring-flood; it was only a matter of time before Dmitrii’s guards burst forth in angry pursuit. “Hurry,” Vasya said.

The revel was dying away now, as the drunks staggered home. The next day was the Day of Forgiveness. The three ran up the hill unremarked, keeping to the shadows. Sasha carried his stolen sword, and Rodion had an ax.

The Grand Prince’s palace stood blocky and impregnable at the crown of the hill. Torches lit the wooden gate, and two shivering guards flanked it, ice in their beards. It certainly did not look like a palace in imminent danger.

“Now what?” whispered Rodion, while they skulked in the shadow of the wall opposite.

“We must get in,” said Vasya impatiently. “The Grand Prince must be woken and warned.”

“How can you be—” Rodion began.

“There are two smaller gates,” cut in Sasha, “besides the main one. But they will be barred from the inside.”

“We must go over the wall,” said Vasya shortly.

Sasha looked at his sister. He had never thought of her as girlish, but the last trace of softness was gone. The quick brain, the strong limbs were there: fiercely, almost defiantly present, though concealed beneath her encumbering dress. She was more feminine than she had ever been, and less.

Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.

She seemed to catch his thought; she bent her head in troubled acknowledgment. Then she said, “I am smaller than either of you. If you help me, I can get over the wall. I will open a gate for you.” Her eye traveled once more over the snowy, silent street. “Watch for enemies in the meantime.”

“Why are you giving orders?” Rodion managed. “How do you know all this?”

“How,” interrupted Sasha with impatience of his own, “do you mean to open a gate for us?”

Both men distrusted Vasya’s answering smile; wide and careless. “Watch,” she said.

Sasha and Rodion glanced at each other. They had seen men on battlefields wear that face, and it rarely ended well.

Vasya ran like a wraith for the Grand Prince of Moscow’s walls. Sasha followed her. In her face was a fitful light that he did not like. “Lift me up,” she said.

“Vasya—”

“There is no time, brother.”

“Mother of God,” Sasha muttered, and bent to take her weight. She was bird-light when she stepped to his back, and then, as he straightened, to his shoulders. She was still short of the wall, but then she jumped unexpectedly, sending him sprawling backward, and caught the wall-top with the first two joints of her strong fingers. She had no mittens. She pulled herself up by main force. One booted foot rose to touch the wall-top. An instant Vasya crouched there, almost invisible. Then she dropped into the deep snow on the other side.

Sasha got to his feet, brushing off snow. Rodion came up behind him, shaking his head. “When I met her at Lesnaya Zemlya I was lost in the rain,” he said. “She was gathering mushrooms, wet as a water-spirit, and riding a horse with no bridle. I knew she was not a girl formed for convents but—”

“She is herself,” said Sasha. “Doom and blessing both, and it is for God to judge her. But in this, I will trust her. We must watch for enemies, and wait.”

VASYA DROPPED FROM THE WALL into a snowbank and rose to her feet unhurt. Now she got some good out of her silly footrace around Dmitrii Ivanovich’s palace—it seemed so long ago—for she was reasonably sure of her ground. There—stables. There—brewery. Smokehouse, tannery, blacksmith. The palace itself.

Above all, Vasya wanted her horse. She wanted his strength, his warm breath, his uncomplicated affection. Without him, she was a lost girl in a dress; on his back, she felt invincible.

But first there was another boon from that footrace, and she must use it.

With freezing fingers, Vasya reopened the cut on her wrist, that had given the ghost suck earlier. She let three drops fall into the snow.

A dvorovoi is a dooryard-spirit, rarer than a domovoi, less understood and sometimes vicious. This one peeled softly out of the starlight and the muddy earth, looking like a heap of filthy snow, faint as all the chyerti in Moscow were faint.

Vasya was glad to see him.

“You again,” it said, baring its teeth. “You have broken into my yard.”

“To save your master,” Vasya returned.

The dvorovoi smiled. “Perhaps I want a new master. The red sorcerer will wake the sleeper and silence the bells, and perhaps then folk will leave gifts for me again.”

The sleeper…Vasya shook her head sharply. “You do not pick and choose,” she told him. “You are bound to your people for good and for ill, and you must help them at need. I mean no harm. Will you help me now?” She reached out, gingerly, and pressed her bloody fingers to the dvorovoi’s cold, misshapen face.

“What would you have me do?” asked the dvorovoi warily, smelling of her blood. He was more flesh than snow now.

Vasya smiled at him, coldly. “Make noise,” she said. “Rouse the whole cursed palace. The time for secrets is past.”

A DRINK-SODDEN HUSH LAY over the palace of the Grand Prince, and the city outside had gone quiet. But it was not a peaceful quiet, as was proper after days of cakes and drink. A tension ran through the silence, and Vasya’s skin prickled. The dvorovoi had heard her out, narrow-eyed, then abruptly disappeared.

From childhood, Vasya had been able to walk softly, but now she crept from shadow to shadow with a robber’s care, almost afraid to breathe, keeping the wall on her left. Where was the postern-gate? She avoided the guttering pools of torchlight, watching for the door, watching for guards, listening, listening…

Suddenly from across the dooryard there came a shrieking, as though a thousand cats were having their tails pulled. The dogs in their kennels began to bay.

A torch ran along a gallery above, and a lamp was lit. Then another, and another, as the clamor grew in the dooryard. A woman shrieked. Vasya almost smiled. No room for secrecy now.

Next moment, Vasya tripped over a man’s legs and sprawled in the thick snow. Heart racing, she scrambled up and whirled round. To her right was the postern-gate, sunk in shadow. The single gate-guard sat before it with his head sunk on his breast. It was his legs she had tripped over.

Vasya crept nearer. The man did not move. She put her fingers near his face. No breath. When she shook him by the shoulder, his head lolled on his neck. His throat was cut, gashed deep, and that was not pools of shadow on the snow but blood—

The noise in the dooryard was mounting. Suddenly a rush of bodies—four—six—strong, soft-footed men, darted out of the shadows opposite her and made for the palace steps. Kasyan let them in during the revel, Vasya thought. I am too late. Gathering her strength, she dug her numb hands beneath the dead guard’s arms and dragged him away, breathing a prayer for his soul, slipping on the snow.

As soon as she opened the gate, Sasha thrust his way past her into the dooryard.

“Where is Rodion?” she demanded.

Her brother only shook his head, eyes already up on the swimming shadows, the scrum of bodies, firelight and darkness, a new and unmistakable sound of fighting. A man fell through the fine screen-work that protected the stairs and fell yelling into the dooryard. The dogs still bayed in the kennels. Vasya thought she glimpsed Kasyan, standing taut before the palace-gate, his red hair black in the darkness.

Then above it all rose a roaring battle-cry—reassuringly hale but hoarse with surprise and urgency—the voice of the Grand Prince of Moscow.

“Mitya,” Sasha breathed. Something in that childish nickname—probably not said to Dmitrii’s face since he was crowned at sixteen—held a living echo of their shared youth, and Vasya thought suddenly, That is why he did not come back. However he loved us, he loves this prince more, and Dmitrii needed him.

“Stay here, Vasya,” said Sasha. “Hide. Bar the gate.” Then he was running, sword aflame with the light from above, straight toward the melee. Guards from all over the dooryard were converging. Then a shattering crash came from the main gate. The guards’ steps faltered, and they wavered between the threat behind and the threat above. Sasha did not hesitate. He had reached the foot of the southern staircase, and bounded up into darkness.

Vasya barred the gate as Sasha had bidden her, then stood a moment in the shadows, indecisive. Her gaze went from the quivering main gate, to the bewildered palace guards, to the lights swinging wildly behind the palace’s slitted windows.

She heard her brother’s voice shouting, the ring of his sword. Vasya breathed a prayer for his life, and made for the stable. If she were to do anything for the Grand Prince besides cry warnings, she needed her horse.

She reached the long, low stable and flattened herself once more into the shadows.

A guard in the dooryard wailed and fell, pierced by an arrow shot from over the wall. The whole dooryard was alive with shouting, full of running, bewildered men, many of them drunk. More arrows flew. More men fell. Above the noise she heard Dmitrii’s voice again, desperate now. Vasya prayed Sasha would reach him in time.

The battering redoubled at the gate. She had to get to Solovey. Was he there? Had he been killed, taken somewhere else, wounded…?

Vasya pursed her lips and whistled.

She was rewarded immediately and with a rush of relief by a familiar, furious neigh. Then a crash, as though Solovey meant to kick the stable down. The other horses began to squeal, and soon the whole building was in uproar. Another sound joined the tumult: a whistling, wailing cry unlike that of any horse Vasya had ever heard.

Vasya listened a moment to the shouts of the half-awake grooms. Then, judging her time, she darted inside.

She found chaos, nearly as bad as that in the dooryard without. Panicked horses thrashed in their stalls; the grooms did not know whether to calm them or go investigate the clamor outside. The grooms were all slaves, unarmed and frightened. The hiss and snarl of arrows was clearly audible now, and the screams.

“Do what you must and get out,” said a small voice. “The enemy is near and you are frightening us.” Vasya raised her eyes to the shadows of the hayloft and saw a pair of tiny eyes, set in a small face, scowling down at her. She lifted a hand in acknowledgment.

Chyerti fade, she thought. But they are not gone. The thought lifted her heart. Then she frowned, for the stable was lit by a strange glow.

She slipped down the row of stalls, keeping out of sight of the hurrying grooms. As she went the glow strengthened. Her soundless steps faltered.

Kasyan’s golden mare was glowing. Her mane and tail seemed to drip shards of light. She still wore the golden bridle: bit, reins, and all. She slanted one ear at Vasya and snorted a soft breath: pale mist hazed with her light.

Three stalls down from the mare stood Solovey, watching her with pitched ears, two horses standing still in the midst of the tumult. He, too, wore a bridle, fastened tight to the door of the stall, and his forefeet were hobbled. Vasya ran the last ten steps and threw her arms around the stallion’s neck.

I was afraid you would not come, Solovey said. I did not know where to go to find you. You smell of blood.

She collected herself, fumbled for the buckles of the stallion’s headstall, and with a wrench let the whole contraption fall to the floor. “I am here,” Vasya whispered. “I am here. Why is Kasyan’s horse glowing?”

Solovey snorted and shook his head, relieved of the binding. She is the greatest of us, he said. The greatest and the most dangerous. I did not know her at first—I did not believe she could be taken by force.

The mare watched them with pricked ears and a steady watchful expression in her two burning eyes. Let me loose, she said.

Horses speak mostly with their ears and bodies, but Vasya heard this voice in her bones.

“The greatest of you?” Vasya whispered to Solovey.

Set me free.

Solovey scraped the floor uneasily. Yes. Let us go, he said. Let us go into the forest—this is no place for us.

“No,” she echoed. “This is no place for us. But we must bide awhile. There are debts to pay.” She cut the hobbles from about the stallion’s feet.

Free me, said the golden mare again. Vasya rose slowly. The mare was watching them with an eye like molten gold. Power, barely contained, seemed to roil under her skin.

Vasya, said Solovey uneasily.

Vasya barely heard. She was staring into the mare’s eye, like the pale heart of a fire, and she took one step, then another. Behind her Solovey squealed. Vasya!

The mare mouthed her foamy, golden bit and looked straight back at Vasya. Vasya realized that she was afraid of this horse, when she had never been afraid of a horse in her life.

Perhaps it was that, more than anything else—a revulsion to fear that she should not have felt—that made Vasya reach out, seize a golden buckle, and wrench the bridle from the mare’s head.

The mare froze. Vasya froze. Solovey froze. It seemed the world hung still in its skies. “What are you?” she whispered to the mare.

The mare bent her head—slowly, it seemed, so slowly—to touch the discarded heap of gold, and then raised her head to touch Vasya’s cheek with her nose.

Her flesh was burning hot, and Vasya jerked back with a gasp. When she put a hand to her face, she felt a blister rising.

Then the world moved again; behind her Solovey was rearing. Vasya, get back.

The mare flung her head up. Vasya backed away. The mare reared, and Vasya thought her heart would stop with the fearful beauty of it. She felt a blast of heat on her face, and her breath stilled in her throat. I was foaled, Solovey had told her once. Or perhaps I was hatched. She backed up until she could feel Solovey’s breath on her back, until she could fumble away the bars of his stall, never taking her eyes off the golden mare—mare?

Nightingale, Vasya thought. Solovey means nightingale.

Were there not others, then? Horses that were— This mare…No. Not a mare. Not a mare at all. For before Vasya’s eyes, the rearing horse became a golden bird, greater than any bird Vasya had ever seen, with wings of flame, blue and orange and scarlet.

“Zhar Ptitsa,” Vasya said, tasting the words as though she had never sat at Dunya’s feet hearing tales of the firebird.

The beating of the bird’s wings fanned scorching heat onto her face, and the edges of her feathers were exactly like flames, streaming smoke. Solovey shrilled a cry that was half fear and half triumph. All around, horses squealed and kicked in their fright.

The heat rippled and steamed in the winter air. The firebird broke the bars of the stall as though they were twigs and hurled herself up, up toward the roof, dripping sparks like rain. The roof was no barrier. The bird tore through it, trailing light. Up and up she went, bright as a sun, so that the night became day. Somewhere in the dooryard, Vasya heard a roar of rage.

She watched the bird go, lips parted, wondering, terrified, silent. The firebird had left a trail of flames that were already catching in the hay. A finger of fire raced up a tinder-dry post and a new heat scorched Vasya’s burned cheek.

All around, flames began to rise, and bitter smoke, shockingly fast.

With a cry, Vasya recalled herself and ran to free the horses. For a moment she thought she saw the small, hay-colored stable-spirit beside her, and it hissed, “Idiot girl, to free the firebird!” Then it was gone, opening stall-doors even faster than she.

Some of the grooms had run already, leaving the doors gaping open; the breezes whispered in to fan the flames. Others, bewildered but afraid for their charges, ran to help with the horses, indistinct shapes in the smoke. Vasya and Solovey, the grooms, and the little vazila began pulling the terrified horses out. The smoke choked them all, and more than once Vasya was nearly trampled.

At length, Vasya came to her own Zima, taken into the Grand Prince’s stable and now rearing panicked in a stall. Vasya dodged the flying hooves, yanked away the bars of her stall. “Get out,” she told her, fiercely. “That way. Go!” The order and a slap on the quarters sent the scared filly running for the door.

Solovey appeared at Vasya’s shoulder. Flames all around them now, spinning like spring dancers. The heat scorched her face. For an instant Vasya thought she saw Morozko, dressed in black.

Solovey squealed when a burning straw struck his flank. Vasya, we must get out.

Not every horse had been freed; she could hear the cries of the few remaining, lost in the flames.

“No! They will—” But her protest died unfinished.

The shriek of a familiar voice had sounded from the dooryard.

25. The Girl in the Tower

Vasya threw herself onto Solovey and he galloped out of the barn, while the flames snapped wolflike at their heels. They emerged into some lurid parody of daylight; flames from the burning barn cast a hellish glow over dooryard and lights shone from every part of Dmitrii’s palace.

There was a pitched battle in the dooryard, and a roaring like a riot above. She couldn’t see her brother—but Vasya could hardly tell friend from foe in the wicked light.

Long cracks had appeared in the main gate; it would not hold much longer. Slaves ran with buckets and wet blankets to put out the flames; half the guardsmen were helping them now. Fire was just as great a danger as arrows, in a city made all of wood.

Then that half-familiar shriek came again. The light from the burning barn threw the whole yard into flickering relief, and she saw Konstantin Nikonovich creeping along the inner wall.

What is he doing here? Vasya wondered. At first she felt nothing but surprise.

Then she saw with horror that the priest clutched a child by one wrist. The girl had no cloak, no kerchief, no boots. She was shivering miserably.

“Aunt Vasya!” she shrilled, in a voice Vasya knew. “Aunt Vasya!” Her voice sailed clear through the sweltering air. “Let me go!”

“Masha!” Vasya cried in disbelief. A child? A prince’s daughter? Here?

Then she saw Kasyan Lutovich. He was running down into the dooryard, mouth open with mingled rage and triumph. He leaped bareback onto one of the escaped horses, wheeled, and came galloping along the wall, heedless of arrows.

For a breath, Vasya did not understand.

In that moment, with a perfectly timed movement, Kasyan overtook Konstantin, snatched the girl, and flung her facedown on the horse’s sweating shoulder.

“Masha!” Vasya shouted. Solovey had already spun to chase them down. Great arcs of slush flew from his galloping feet. Vasya crouched on his neck, forgetting the arrows. But horse and rider had the whole width of the dooryard to cross, and Kasyan gained the terem-steps unmolested. He slid down the horse’s shoulder, with Marya held, kicking, under one arm. His glance rose and met Vasya’s. “Now,” Kasyan called to her, teeth bared, eyes glittering with the rising flames, “you may regret your pride.”

He hurried up with Marya into the darkness. “You promised!” Konstantin cried after him, arriving, stumbling, at the foot of the stairs and hesitating before the dark tunnel of the staircase. “You said—”

A ripple of wild laughter answered him, then silence. Konstantin stood gaping up into the dark.

Solovey and Vasya reached the other side of the yard. Konstantin spun to face them. Solovey reared, his hooves a breath from the priest’s head, and Konstantin toppled backward. Vasya leaned forward, her glance as cold as her voice. Behind them came the battering on the gate; above them, the ringing of swords. “What have you done? What does he want with my niece?”

“He promised me vengeance,” Konstantin whispered. He was shivering all over. “He said I had but to—”

“In the name of God!” cried Vasya. She slid down Solovey’s shoulder. “Vengeance for what? I once saved your life. While you were still a man, unbroken, I saved your life. Have you forgotten? What does he want with her?”

For a flicker, she saw the painter, the priest, somewhere beneath the layers of bitterness. “He said that if I were to have you, then he must have her,” Konstantin whispered. “He said I could—” His voice grew shriller. “I didn’t want to! But you left me! You left me alone, seeing devils. What was I to do? Come now. You are here now, and I ask only—”

“You have been tricked, again,” interrupted Vasya coldly. “Get out of my sight. You baptized my sister’s child; for her sake I will not kill you.”

“Vasya,” said Konstantin. He made to reach out; Solovey snapped yellow teeth and his hand dropped. “I did it for you. Because of you. I—I hate you. You—are beautiful.” He said this like a curse. “If you had only listened—”

“You have only been the tool of wickeder things,” she returned. “But I have had enough of it. Next time I see you, Konstantin Nikonovich, I am going to kill you.”

He drew himself up. Perhaps he meant to speak again. But she had no more time. She hissed a word to Solovey; the stallion reared, swift as a snake. Konstantin stumbled back, mouth open, dodging the stallion’s hooves, and then he fled. Vasya heard him weep as he ran.

But she did not watch him go. The dark stairs above seemed to breathe horrors, though the rest of the dooryard was alight from the burning stable. She gathered herself to hurry upward alone. “Solovey,” she said, looking behind her, a foot on the first step. “You must—”

But then she paused, for the sound of battle above and behind her had changed. Vasya turned to look again at the dooryard. The flames in the stable leaped higher than trees now, burning a strange, dull scarlet.

Dark things with slavering mouths began creeping out of the reddened shadows.

Vasya’s blood turned cold. Dmitrii’s men in the dooryard stumbled. Here and there a sword fell from a nerveless hand. A man above screamed.

“Solovey,” Vasya whispered. “What—?”

Then, with a final, rending crack, the gate gave. Chelubey came galloping into the red light calling orders, competent, fearless. He had archers to his left and right, and they filled the dooryard with arrows.

Dmitrii’s men, already wavering, broke. Now Vasya had an impression of loss and horror and chaos; horses fleeing blind, arrows flying over the wall-top, and all around pallid, grinning things that came stumbling out of the bloody dark, hands reaching, smiles pasted on faces sloppy with rot. Behind them came warriors, steadily advancing, with quick horses and bright swords.

Was this sorcery? Could Kasyan call fiends from Hell and make them answer? What was he doing with Marya up there in the tower? The flames from the stable seemed drenched in blood, and more and more creatures crept from the shadows, driving her people onto the blades of their attackers.

An arrow whistled past her head and thudded into the post beside her. Vasya jerked in startled reflex. One of the horrors stretched out a clawing hand toward her, grinning, its eyes blind. Solovey lashed out with his forefeet, and the thing fell back.

Chelubey’s deep voice called again. The rain of arrows grew fiercer. Dmitrii’s men could not rally against this new threat; they were fighting ghosts. In a moment the Russians would be cut down, one by one.

Then Sasha’s voice rang out, clearly, calmly. “People of God,” he said, “do not be afraid.”

SASHA HAD LEFT HIS SISTER at the postern-gate and gone running up the stairs into the melee of the palace, following the Grand Prince’s voice, the screams and the crashing. Below him, dogs barked and horses squealed. The palace’s front gate was taking a steady battering; Kasyan’s men and Chelubey’s Tatars howled to rouse the dead. The attackers’ chance for secrecy was gone; now their only hope lay in swiftness and in sowing chaos and fear. How many men had crept in through the postern-gate before Vasya gave the alarm?

The musty reek of old bearskin warned him, and then a sword came at Sasha’s head out of the near-dark of the staircase. He blocked it with a teeth-grinding jar and a shower of sparks. One of Kasyan’s men. Sasha did not try to engage him, only ducked the second stroke, dodged past the man, booted him down the stairs, and kept running.

A door stood ajar; he darted into the first anteroom. No one. Only attendants lying dead, guards with their throats slit.

Higher in the palace, Sasha thought he heard Dmitrii cry out. The light from the dooryard glowed suddenly bright in the slitted windows. Sasha ran on, praying incoherently.

Here was the receiving-room, silent and still, except that the door behind the throne stood ajar and from behind it came the crash of blades and a yellow flicker of firelight.

Sasha ran through. Dmitrii Ivanovich was there, unaided except for a single living guard. Four men with curving swords opposed them. Three attendants, who had been unarmed, and four more guards, whose weapons had not done enough, lay dead on the floor.

As Sasha watched, the Grand Prince’s last guard went down with a sword-hilt to the face. Dmitrii killed the attacker and backed up, teeth bared.

The eyes of the prince and the monk met for the briefest instant.

Then Sasha threw his sword. It went end over end and clean through the leather-armored back of one of the invaders. Dmitrii blocked the stroke of the second man, riposted with his sword in a flat arc that took his opponent’s head off.

Sasha ran forward, scooping up a dead man’s blade, and then it was hot, close battle, two against two, until eventually the interlopers fell, spitting blood.

A sudden, heaving silence.

The cousins looked at each other.

“Whose are they?” Dmitrii asked, with a look at the dead men.

“Kasyan’s,” said Sasha.

“I thought I recognized this one,” said Dmitrii, prodding one with the flat of his sword. There was blood on his nose and knuckles; his barrel chest heaved for air. Shouting came up from the guardrooms below; a greater shouting from the dooryard outside. Then a rending crash.

“Dmitrii Ivanovich,” said Sasha. “I beg you will forgive me.”

He wondered if the Grand Prince would kill him here in the shadows.

“Why did you lie to me?” asked Dmitrii.

“For my sister’s virtue,” said Sasha. “And then for her courage.”

Dmitrii held his serpent-headed sword, naked and bloody, in one broad hand. “Will you ever lie to me again?” he asked.

“No,” said Sasha. “I swear it.”

Dmitrii sighed, as though a bitter burden had fallen away. “Then I forgive you.”

Another crash from the dooryard, screams, and a sudden flaring of firelight. “What is happening?” Dmitrii asked.

“Kasyan Lutovich means to make himself Grand Prince,” said Sasha.

Dmitrii smiled at that, slow and grim. “Then I will kill him,” he said very simply. “Come with me, cousin.”

Sasha nodded, and the two went down to the battle below.

VASYA WRENCHED ROUND. Her brother stood at the top of the staircase, on the landing where it split to go up either to the terem or to the audience-chambers. The screen on the steps had been torn away. Next moment the Grand Prince of Moscow, nose and knuckles bleeding, came out of the darkness above, alive, on his feet, holding a bloody sword. For an instant, Dmitrii looked at Sasha, his face full of love and unforgotten anger. Then he raised his voice and stood shoulder to shoulder with his cousin. “Rise, men of God!” he shouted. “Fear nothing!”

The battle paused for a moment, as though the world listened. Then Dmitrii and Sasha, as one, rushed, shouting down the steps. They ran past Vasya, not sparing her a glance, and then out into the dooryard.

And their cry was answered. For Brother Rodion strode now through the ruins of the main gate, his ax in his hand, and he was not alone. Behind and beside him ranged a motley collection of monks and townsmen and warriors—the kremlin gate-guard.

Rodion’s newcomers recoiled when he entered the dooryard. The dead things gibbered and began to advance toward the new threat. Chelubey knew his work; he split his force smoothly to counter Dmitrii and Sasha on the one side, Rodion on the other. The battle wavered on a knife-edge.

Sasha was still shoulder to shoulder with Dmitrii, and the gray eyes of each were violet with strange fire.

“Do not be afraid,” Sasha called again. He stabbed one man, dodged the stroke of another. “People of God, do not be afraid.”

Chelubey looked annoyed now, snapping quick orders. Bows came to bear on the Grand Prince. The Russian men-at-arms blinked like men wakened from nightmares. Dmitrii beheaded one of Kasyan’s men, kicked the body down, and called, “What are devils to men of faith?”

Chelubey coolly set an arrow to his string, sighting on Dmitrii. But Sasha thrust the Grand Prince aside and took the arrow in the meat of his upper arm. He grunted; Vasya cried out in protest.

Dmitrii caught his cousin. The broad-headed arrow had pierced the monk’s upper arm. The men wavered again. The red light strengthened. More arrows flew. One stirred the Grand Prince’s cap. But Sasha shook Dmitrii off and forced himself to his feet, his face set against the pain. He yanked the shaft out, switched his sword to his shield-hand. “Rise, men of God!”

Rodion roared out a war-cry, swinging his ax. Some of the men seized the loose horses and leaped to their backs, and the battle was furiously, finally, joined.

“Solovey,” said Vasya. “I must go up into the tower. I must go after Masha and Kasyan. Go—I beg you will help my brother. Protect him. Protect Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

Solovey flattened his ears. You cannot just—

But she had already put a hand on the stallion’s nose and then raced up into the darkness.

BEFORE HER ROSE THE ENCLOSED STAIRS that would take her into the upper reaches of the Grand Prince’s palace, with the fine screen-work all gashed and broken. Vasya paused on the landing where the staircase split, where Sasha had called down. She looked back. Dmitrii was riding one of the horses from the burning stable. Her brother had sprung to Solovey’s reluctant back: man of God riding a horse of the older, pagan world.

Solovey reared, and Sasha’s sword swept down. Vasya breathed a prayer for them and looked up instead. Bodies lay crumpled on the left-hand staircase, the way to the prince’s antechamber. But on the way to the terem lay only an unnatural blackness.

Vasya turned right and ran into the dark, holding the image of her horse and her brother in her mind like a talisman.

Ten steps. Twenty. Up and up.

How long did the stairs go on? She should have reached the top by now.

A scraping step came from above. Vasya jerked to a halt. A figure like a man lurched toward her, groping blindly, on legs ill-jointed as a doll’s.

The man came closer, and Vasya recognized him.

“Father,” cried Vasya, unthinking. “Father, is it you?” It was like her father but not; his face, but empty-eyed, body crushed and misshapen from the blow that had killed him.

Pyotr came closer. He turned a flat and gleaming eye toward her.

“Father, forgive me—” Vasya reached out.

Then there was no father at all, only the darkness, full of the beating firelight. She could no longer hear the battle below. She paused while her heart thundered in her ears. How long was this stair? Vasya started up again. Her breath came short; her legs burned.

A thud on the stairs above. Then another. Footsteps. Her feet stumbled and her breathing whined in her ears. There—coming out of the darkness above them—that was her brother Alyosha, with his gray eyes, so like their father’s. But he had no throat, no throat at all and no jaw. It had all been torn away, and she thought she saw the marks of teeth in the shreds of remaining skin. An upyr had been at him, or worse, and he had died…

The phantom tried to speak; she saw the bloody ruin working. But nothing came out save gobbling sounds and bits of flesh. But still there were those eyes, cool and gray, looking at her sadly.

Vasya, weeping now, ran past this creature and kept on.

Next she saw a little group on the stairs above; three men standing over a huddled heap, their faces lit with red.

Vasya realized that the heap was Irina, her sister. Irina’s face was bruised, her skirts a mass of blood. She threw herself at the men with an inarticulate snarl, but they disappeared. Only her dead sister remained. Then she was gone, too, and there was only oily darkness.

Vasya swallowed another sob and ran on, stumbling over the steps. Now an enormous bulk lay in front of her, sprawled head-down. As Vasya ran toward it, she saw that it was Solovey lying on his side, with an arrow buried to the feathers in his wise, dark eye.

Was it real? Not? Both? When would it end? How long could the stairs go on? Vasya was sprinting up now, her courage all forgotten; there were only the steps, her terror, her pounding heart. She could think of nothing but escape, but the stairs went on and she would run up forever, watching everything she feared most play out before her.

Another figure appeared, this one old and bent and veiled. When it raised a rheumy gaze to Vasya’s face, she recognized her own eyes.

Vasya stopped. She barely breathed. This was the face of her most dreadful dream: herself, imprisoned behind walls until she grew to accept them, her soul withered away. She was trapped in a tower, just like this nightmare Vasilisa; she would never get out until she was old and broken, until madness claimed her…

But even as the thought formed, Vasya quelled it.

“No,” she said savagely, almost spitting in the illusion’s face. “I chose death in the winter forest once, rather than wear your face. I’d choose it again. You are nothing; only a shadow, meant to frighten me.”

She tried to push past. But the woman did not move, or disappear. “Wait,” it hissed.

Vasya stilled, and looked again at the worn face. Then she understood. “You are the ghost from the tower.”

The ghost nodded. “I saw—the priest take Marya,” she breathed. “I followed. I had not left the tower since—but I followed. I can do nothing—but I followed. For the child.” Was that grief in the ghost’s face? Bitterness? The ghost’s throat worked. “Go—inside,” she said. “The door is there.” She laid a quivering hand on what appeared to be blank wall. “Save her.”

“Thank you—I am sorry,” Vasya whispered. Sorry for the tower and the walls, and this woman’s—whoever she was—long torment. “I will free you if I can.”

The ghost only shook her head, and stepped aside. Vasya realized that to her left there was a door. She pushed it open and went inside.

SHE STOOD IN A magnificent room. A low fire burned in the stove. The light fingered the innumerable silks and golden things that enriched that place, idly, like a prince surfeited with excess. The floor was thick with black pelts. Ornaments hung on the walls, and everywhere were cushions and chests and tables of black and silken wood. The stove was covered with tiles painted with flames and flowers, fruits and bright-winged birds.

Marya sat on a bench beside the stove, eating cakes with abandon. She bit, chewed, and swallowed vigorously, but her eyes were dull. She wore the heavy golden necklace that Kasyan had tried to put on Vasya. Her back bowed with the weight. The stone on the necklace glowed a violent red.

In a chair sat Kaschei the Deathless. In that light, his hair glittered black against his pale neck. He wore every finery that money could contrive: cloth-of-silver, embroidered with strange flowers; silk, velvet, brocade; things that Vasya didn’t have a name for. His mouth was a smiling gash in his short beard. Triumph shone from his eyes.

Vasya, sickened, shut the door behind her and stood silent.

“Well met, Vasya,” Kasyan said. A small, fierce smile curled his mouth. “Took you long enough. Did my creatures entertain you?” He looked younger somehow: young as she, smooth-skinned like a full-fed tick. “Chelubey is coming. Will you watch my coronation, after I throw down Dmitrii Ivanovich?”

“I have come for my niece,” said Vasya. What was real, here in this shining chamber? She could feel the illusions hovering.

Masha sat oblivious beside the oven, shoveling the cakes into her mouth.

“Have you?” Kasyan said drily. “Only for the child? Not my company? You wound me. Tell me why should I not kill you where you stand, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

Vasya stepped closer. “Do you really want me dead?”

He snorted, though his eyes darted once over her face and hair and throat. “Are you offering yourself in exchange for this maiden? Unoriginal. Besides you are only a bony creature—the slave of a frost-demon—and too ugly to wed. This child, on the other hand…” He ran an indolent hand over Marya’s cheek. “She is so strong. Didn’t you see my illusions in the dooryard and on the stair?”

Vasya’s furious breath came short and she took a stride forward. “I broke his jewel. I am not his slave. Let the child go. I will stay in her place.”

“Will you?” he asked. “I think not.” His lips had a fat, hungry curve. The red light at his hands glowed brighter, drawing her gaze…and then his doubled fist in her stomach knocked her wheezing to the ground. He had closed the distance between them, and she had not seen him come.

Vasya lay in a ball of pain, arms around her ribs.

“You think you could offer me anything?” he hissed into her face, showering her with spit. “After your little rat-creature cost my people their surprise? After you freed my horse? You ugly fool, how much do you think you are worth?”

He kicked her in the stomach. Her ribs cracked. Blackness exploded across her vision. He raised a hand, limned with red light. Then the light became blood-colored flames wrapping his fingers. She could smell the fire. Somewhere behind him, Marya gave a thin, pained cry.

He bent nearer, put the burning hand almost onto her face. “Who do you think you are, compared to me?”

“Morozko spoke true,” Vasya whispered, unable to take her eyes off the flames. “You are a sorcerer. Kaschei the Deathless.”

Kasyan’s answering smile had an edge of grimy secrets, of lightless years, of famine, and terror, and endless, gnawing hunger. The fire in his hand went blue, then vanished. “My name is Kasyan Lutovich,” he said. “The other is a foolish nickname. I was a little thin creature as a child, you know, and so they nicknamed me for my bones. Now I am the Grand Prince of Moscow.” He straightened up, looked down at her, and laughed suddenly. “A poor champion, you,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come. You won’t be my wife. I’ve changed my mind. I will keep Masha for that, and you may be my slave. I will break you slowly.”

Vasya didn’t answer. Her vision still sparked red-black with pain.

Kasyan bent down and gripped her hard by the back of her neck. He put his other forefinger to where her tears pooled just at the corner of her eyes. His hands were cold as death. “Perhaps you don’t need to see at all,” he whispered. He tapped her eyelid with a long-nailed hand. “I would like that; you an eyeless drudge in my Tower of Bones.”

Vasya’s breathing snarled in her throat. Behind him, Marya had left off her cakes, and she was watching them with a dull, incurious expression.

Suddenly Kasyan’s head jerked up. “No,” he said.

Vasya, shivering, her cracked ribs afire, rolled over to follow his gaze.

There stood the ghost—the ghost of the staircase, the ghost from her sister’s tower. The scanty hair streamed, the loose-lipped mouth gaped on emptiness. She was bent as though with pain. But she spoke. “Don’t touch her,” the ghost said.

“Tamara,” Kasyan said. Vasya stiffened in surprise. “Go back outside. Go back to your tower; that is where you belong.”

“I will not,” croaked the ghost. She stepped forward.

Kasyan recoiled, staring. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. “Don’t look at me that way. I never hurt you—no, never.”

The ghost glanced at Vasya, urgently, and then moved toward Kasyan, drawing his eyes.

“Are you afraid?” the ghost whispered, a parody of intimacy. “You were always afraid. You feared my mother’s horses. I had to catch yours for you—put your bridle on the mare’s head—do you remember? I loved you in those days; I would do just as you said.”

“Be silent!” he hissed. “You should not be here. You cannot be here. I set you apart from me.”

Ghost and sorcerer were staring at each other with mingled rage and hunger and bitter loss. “No,” breathed the ghost. “That is not how it was. You wanted to keep me. I fled. I came to Moscow and went into Ivan’s tower, where you could not follow.” One bony hand went to her throat. “Even then, I could never be free of you. But my daughter—she died free. Beloved. I won that much.”

Tamara, Vasya thought.

Grandmother.

While the ghost whispered, Vasya had crept to where Marya sat silent beside the stove, still eating, not looking up. Tears had made tracks in the child’s dirty face. Vasya tried pulling her toward the door. But Marya only sat stiff, dull-eyed. Vasya’s cracked ribs burned with the effort.

A heavy step and a whiff of perfumed oil warned her, but she did not turn in time. Kasyan seized Vasya from behind and wrenched her arm up, so that she choked back a scream. The sorcerer spoke into her ear. “You think you can trick me?” he hissed. “A girl, a ghost, and a child? I don’t care what witch bore you all; I am master.”

“Marya Vladimirovna,” said the ghost in her strange, blurred voice. “Look at me.”

Marya’s head slowly rose, her eyes slowly opened.

She saw the ghost.

She screamed, a raw, child’s wail of terror. Kasyan’s gaze shifted toward the girl for just a moment and Vasya reached back, ribs aching, and seized Kasyan’s knife—her knife, where it hung from his belt. She tried to stab him. He recoiled, and she missed, but his grip on her arm weakened.

Vasya hurled herself forward and rolled. She came up holding the knife. Armed now, at least, and on her feet, but it hurt to breathe, and Kasyan was between her and Marya.

Kasyan drew his sword and bared his teeth. “I am going to kill you.”

Vasya had no hope; a half-trained girl against an armed man. Kasyan’s blade came slicing down and Vasya just managed to turn it with her dagger. Masha sat swaying like a sleepwalker. “Masha!” Vasya shouted frantically. “Get up! Get to the door! Go, child!” She kicked a table at Kasyan and backed up, sobbing for breath.

Kasyan cut sideways and Vasya ducked. Now it seemed that a black-cloaked figure waited in the corner. For me, she thought. He is here for me, for the last time. The sword came whistling across to cut her in two. She jumped back, barely.

For an instant, Vasya’s gaze flew again to the ghost. Tamara, behind Kasyan, had put a hand to her own throat, at the place where once a talisman had hung around Vasya’s neck. A talisman that bound her…Then Tamara’s frantic eyes shot to the child, and Vasya understood.

She dodged Kasyan’s sword, dodged again. Every strike fell closer; Vasya could barely draw breath. There was Marya, sitting stiff. In the instant before the sword fell a final time, Vasya reached for Marya and found a red-gold thing, heavy and cold beneath the child’s blouse. Vasya broke it off with a wrench—so that the metal cut into her palm and bloodied the child’s throat—and in the same motion, she whirled and flung it at the sorcerer’s face. It struck him with a splatter of gold and red light, and then fell, broken, to the floor.

Kasyan stared from it to Vasya, shock in his eyes.

Then he staggered back. His face began to change. Years seemed to rush in, as though a dam had broken. Suddenly he was transformed into an old man, skeletal, red-eyed. They stood in a room that was no magic sorcerer’s lair, but only the empty tower workroom of the Grand Princess of Moscow, dusty and smelling of wet wool and women, its inner door barred.

“Bitch!” Kasyan roared. “Bitch! You dare?” He advanced again, but now he was stumbling. His guard dropped, and Vasya had not forgotten her days under the tree with Morozko. She dodged his wavering arm, came up inside his guard, and drove the knife between his ribs.

Kasyan grunted. It was the ghost who screamed. The sorcerer bled not at all, but Tamara’s side was bleeding in the place where Vasya had stabbed Kasyan.

The ghost doubled over and crumpled to the floor.

Kasyan straightened, unwounded, and advanced again, teeth bared, ancient, unkillable. Vasya had dragged Marya bodily upright and now she backed toward the door. Marya went with her, trembling, life in her steps once more, though she uttered no sound, her eyes the eyes of a girl in a nightmare. Vasya’s ribs felt as though they would pierce through her skin with each step. Kasyan still had his sword…

“There is nowhere to go,” Kasyan whispered. “You cannot kill me. Besides, the city is on fire, you murderess. You will stay here in the tower, while your family burns.”

He saw her face and burst out laughing. The empty pit of his mouth gaped wide. “You didn’t know! Fool, not to know what happens when you release a firebird.”

Then Vasya heard the vast low roar outside, a sound like the end of the world. She thought of the flight of a firebird, unleashed on a wooden city at night.

I must kill him, she thought, if it is the last thing I do. Kasyan advanced once more, sword high. Vasya hurled Marya away from her and dodged the sweeping blade.

The words of Dunya’s fairy tale ran ridiculously through her mind: Kaschei the Deathless keeps his life inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare—

But that was only a story. There was no needle here, no egg…

Vasya’s thoughts seemed to swerve to a halt. There was only herself. And her niece. And her grandmother.

Witches, Vasya thought. We can see things that others cannot, and make faded things real.

Then Vasya understood.

She did not give herself pause to think. She hurled herself at the ghost. One hand reached out and plucked the thing she knew must be there, hanging from the gray creature’s throat. It was a jewel—or had been—it felt in her hand a little like Marya’s necklace, but fragile as an eggshell, as though years and grief had eaten it away from within.

The ghost whimpered, as though caught between agony and relief.

Then Vasya came up kneeling, holding the necklace in her hand, facing the sorcerer. Her ribs—nothing had ever hurt so much. She fought down the pain.

“Let that go,” said Kasyan. His voice had changed: gone flat and thin. He had his sword to Marya’s throat, his hand fisted in her hair. “Put it down, girl. Or the child dies.”

But behind her the ghost sighed, just the tiniest bit. “Poor immortal,” said Morozko’s voice, softer and colder and fainter than she’d ever heard it.

Vasya let out a breath of rage and relief. She had not seen him come, but now he stood, little more than a thickening of shadow, beside the ghost. He did not look at her.

“Did you think I was ever far from you?” the death-god murmured to Kasyan. “I was always a breath away: a heartbeat.”

The sorcerer tightened his grip on the sword, on Marya’s hair. He was looking at Morozko with terror and a thread of agonized longing. “What care I for you, old nightmare?” he spat. “Kill me, and the child dies first.”

“Why not go with him?” Vasya asked Kasyan softly, not taking her eyes from the blade of his sword. The tarnished necklace was warm in her hand, beating like a tiny heart. So fragile. “You put your life in Tamara. So neither of you could properly die. You could only rot. But that is finished. Better to go now, and find peace.”

“Never!” snapped Kasyan. His sword-hand was trembling. “Tamara,” he said, feverishly. “Tamara—”

A red light was trickling in from the window now, brighter and brighter. Not daylight.

Tamara stepped toward him. “Kasyan,” she said. “I loved you once. Come with me now, and be at peace.”

Staring at her like a man drowning, Kasyan didn’t seem to notice when the sword loosened in his grip. Just a little…

Vasya, with her last strength, lunged forward, seized the blade, and put her whole weight on it. He fell back, and Vasya seized Marya, pulled the child back and held her, ignoring the pain in her ribs and hands. She had cut her palms on his sword; she felt the blood begin to drip.

The sorcerer seemed to recall himself; he bared his teeth, face full of rage—

“Don’t watch,” Vasya whispered to Marya.

And she crushed the stone to fragments in her bloody fist.

Kasyan screamed. Agony in his face—and relief. “Go in peace,” Vasya told him. “God be with you.”

Then Kaschei the Deathless crumpled dead to the floor.

THE GHOST LINGERED, though her outline wavered like a flame in a strong wind. A black shadow waited beside her.

“I am sorry I screamed when I saw you,” Marya whispered unexpectedly to the ghost, her first words since being brought to the tower. “I did not mean it.”

“Your daughter had five children—Grandmother,” said Vasya. “The children also have children. We will not forget you. You saved our lives. We love you. Be at peace.”

Tamara’s lips twisted: a horrible rictus, but Vasya saw the smile in it.

Then the death-god put out a hand. The ghost, trembling, took it.

She and the death-god disappeared. But before they vanished, Vasya thought she saw a beautiful girl, with black hair and green eyes, clasped and glowing in Morozko’s arms.

26. Fire

Vasya stumbled down the stairs, bleeding, dragging the child, who ran in her wake, speechless again and tearless.

The stairway was full of choking smoke. Marya began to cough. There were people on the stairs now: servants. The phantoms were gone. Vasya heard the shrieks of women up above, as though Kasyan had never been there: a young sorcerer with flame in his fist, or an old man, screaming.

They emerged into the dooryard. The gates were smashed; the yard full of people. Some lay unmoving in the bloodied and trampled snow. A few gasped, whimpered, called out. No more arrows flew. Chelubey was nowhere in sight. Dmitrii was calling orders, his face a mask of bloody soot. Most of the horses had been haltered and were being led hastily out through the gate—away from the fire. How near was it? What house had finally succumbed to the falling sparks? The barn-fire in the dooryard was dying down; Dmitrii’s army of servants must have been able to contain it. But Vasya could hear the whispering roar of a greater fire, and she knew they were not safe yet. The wind must be behind the flames, for her to taste the smoke. It was coming. It was coming, and it was her fault.

Sasha was still riding Solovey, she saw with relief. Her brother was speaking to a man on the ground.

Marya gave a cry of fear. Vasya turned her head.

The demon of midnight: moon-haired, star-eyed, night-skinned, had appeared on the stairs, as though born of the space between flames. No horse; just herself. The red light shone purple on the chyert’s cheek. Something like sorrow put out the starlight in her gaze. “Are they dead?” she asked.

Vasya was still stunned from the fight in the tower. “Who?”

“Tamara,” hissed the chyert impatiently. “Tamara and Kasyan. Are they dead?”

Vasya gathered her wits. “I—yes. Yes. How—?”

But Midnight only said wearily, over the roar, almost to herself, “Her mother will be glad.”

Vasya, much later, would wish she had grasped the significance of this. But at the moment she did not. She was bruised, shocked, and exhausted; Moscow was burning down around them and it was her fault. “They are dead,” she said. “But now the city is on fire. How can Moscow be saved?”

“I am witness to all the world’s midnights,” returned Midnight wearily. “I do not interfere.”

Vasya seized Midnight’s arm. “Interfere.”

The midnight-demon looked taken aback; she pulled, but Vasya hung on grimly, smearing the creature with her blood. She was strong with mortality—and something more. Midnight could not break her grip. “My blood can make your kind strong,” said Vasya coldly. “Perhaps, if I will it, my blood can also make you weak. Shall I try it?”

“There is no way,” breathed Midnight, looking a little uneasy now. “None.”

Vasya shook the chyert so her teeth rattled. “There must be a way!” she cried.

“That is”—Midnight gasped—“long ago, the winter-king might have quieted the flames. He is master of wind and snow.” The glossy eyelids veiled the shining eyes, and her glance turned malicious. “But you were a brave girl and drove Morozko off, broke his power in your hands.”

Vasya’s grip loosened. “Broke—?”

Polunochnitsa half-smiled, teeth gleaming red in the firelight. “Broke,” she said. “As you said, wise girl, your power works two ways.”

Vasya was silent. Midnight bent forward and whispered, “Shall I tell you a secret? With that sapphire, he bound your strength to him—but the magic did what he did not intend; it made him strong but it also pulled him closer and closer to mortality, so that he was hungry for life, more than a man and less than a demon.” Polunochnitsa paused, watching Vasya, and murmured, cruelly, “So that he loved you, and did not know what to do.”

“He is the winter-king; he cannot love.”

“Certainly not, now,” said Polunochnitsa. “For his power broke in your hands, as I said, and by your words, you banished him. Now he will only be seen in Moscow by the dying. So get out of the city, Vasilisa Petrovna; leave it to its fate. You can do nothing more.”

Midnight gave one final, furious wrench and tore herself from Vasya’s grip. In an instant, she was lost to sight in the pall of smoke that veiled the city.

NEXT MOMENT, VASYA HEARD Solovey’s ringing neigh, and then Sasha came splashing off the horse’s back into the half-melted snow. Her brother pulled both her and Marya into a tight embrace and Solovey snuffled gladly over all of them. Sasha smelled of blood and soot. Vasya hugged her brother, stroked Solovey’s nose, and then drew away, swaying on her feet. If she allowed herself weakness now, she knew she would never gather her strength again in time, and she was thinking furiously…

Sasha picked up Marya, set her on Solovey’s back, and turned back to Vasya.

“Little sister,” said Sasha. “We must go. Moscow is burning.”

Dmitrii came galloping up. He looked down at Vasya an instant, her long plait, her bruised face. Something chilled and darkened in his face. But all he said was, “Get them out, Sasha. There is no time.”

Vasya made no move to get onto Solovey’s back. “Olya?” she asked her brother.

“I will go find her,” said Sasha. “You must get on Solovey. Ride out of the city with Marya. There is no time. The fire is coming.”

Over the bustle in the Grand Prince’s dooryard, beyond his walls, Vasya heard the thick cries of people in the city as they gathered what they could and fled.

“Get her up,” said Dmitrii. “Get them out.” He rode off, calling more orders.

Into the shadows, Vasya whispered, “Can you hear me, Morozko?”

Silence.

Outside Dmitrii’s walls, the wind wrapped like a river around the city, whipping the flames higher. She remembered Morozko’s voice. Only if you are dying, he had said. Nothing could keep me from you then. I am Death, and I come to all when they die.

Before Vasya could think twice; before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled off her own cloak, reached up, and cast it around Marya’s drooping shoulders.

“Vasya,” said her brother. “Vasya, what are you—?”

She didn’t hear the rest. “Solovey,” she said to the horse. “Keep them safe.”

The horse bowed his great head. Let me go with you, Vasya, he said, but she only laid a cheek against his nose.

Then she was running out the ruined gate, and toward the burning.

THE STREETS WERE CHOKED with people, most of them going the opposite way. But Vasya was light in the snow, unencumbered with a cloak, and running downhill. She moved quickly.

Twice someone tried to tell her she was going in the wrong direction, and once a man seized her by the arm and tried to shout sense into her ear.

She wrenched herself loose and ran on.

The smoke thickened. The people in the streets grew more panicked. The fire loomed over them; it seemed to fill the world.

Vasya began to cough. Her head swam, her throat swelled. Her mouth was dust-dry. There, finally, was Olga’s palace, above her in the red darkness. Fire raged—one street beyond? Two? She couldn’t tell. Olga’s gates were open, and someone was shouting orders within. A stream of people poured out. Had her sister been carried away already? She breathed a prayer for Olga, then ran on past the palace, into the inferno.

Smoke. She breathed it in. It was her whole world. The streets were empty now. The heat was unbearable. She tried to run on, but found she had fallen to her knees, coughing. She couldn’t get enough air. Get up. She staggered on. Her face was blistering. What was she doing? Her ribs hurt.

Then she couldn’t run anymore. She fell into the slush. Blackness gathered before her eyes…

Moscow disappeared. She was in a nighttime forest: stars and trees, grayness and bitter dark.

Death stood before her.

“I found you,” she said, forcing the words past lips gone numb. She was kneeling there in the snow, in the forest beyond life, and found that she could not rise.

His mouth twisted. “You are dying.” His step did not mark the snow; the light, cold wind did not stir his hair. “You are a fool, Vasilisa Petrovna,” he added.

“Moscow is burning,” she whispered. Her lips and tongue would barely obey her. “It was my fault. I freed the firebird. But Midnight—Midnight said you could put the fire out.”

“Not any longer. I put too much of myself in the jewel, and that is destroyed.” He said this in a voice without feeling. But he drew her standing, roughly. Somewhere around her she sensed the fire; knew her skin was blistering, that she was nearly smothered from the smoke.

“Vasya,” he said. Was that despair in his voice? “This is foolish. I can do nothing. You must go back. You cannot be here. Go back. Run. Live.”

She could barely hear him. “Not alone,” she managed. “If I go back, you are coming with me. You are going to put the fire out.”

“Impossible,” she thought he said.

She wasn’t listening. Her strength was nearly gone. The heat, the burning city, were nearly gone. She was, she realized, about to die.

How had she dragged Olga back from this place? Love, rage, determination.

She wound both her bloody, weakening hands in his robe, breathing the smell of cold water and pine. Of freedom in the trackless moonlight. She thought of her father, whom she had not saved. She thought of others, whom she still could. “Midnight—” she began. She had to gasp between words. “Midnight said you loved me.”

“Love?” he retorted. “How? I am a demon and a nightmare; I die every spring, and I will live forever.”

She waited.

“But yes,” he said wearily. “As I could, I loved you. Now will you go? Live.”

“I, too,” she said. “In a childish way, as girls love heroes that come in the night, I loved you. So come back with me now, and end this.” She seized his hands and pulled with her last remaining strength—with all the passion and anger and love she had—and dragged them both back into the inferno that was Moscow.

They lay tangled on the ground in slush growing hot, and the fire was almost upon them. He blinked in the red light, perfectly still. In his face was pure shock.

“Call the snow,” Vasya shouted into his ear, over the roar. “You are here. Moscow is burning. Call the snow.”

He seemed hardly to hear her. He raised his eyes to the world about them, with wonder and a touch of fear. His hands were still on hers; they were colder than any living man’s.

Vasya wanted to scream, with fear and with urgency. She struck him hard across the face. “Hear me! You are the winter-king. Call the snow!” She reached a hand behind his head and kissed him, bit his lip, smeared her blood on his face, willing him to be real and alive and strong enough for magic.

“If these were ever your people,” she breathed into his ear, “save them.”

His eyes found hers and a little awareness came back into his face. He got to his feet, but slowly, as though moving underwater. He was holding tight to her hand. She had the idea that her grip was the only thing keeping him there.

The fire seemed to fill the world. The air was burning up, leaving only poison behind. She couldn’t breathe. “Please,” she whispered.

Morozko drew breath, harshly, as though the smoke hurt him, too. But when he breathed out, the wind rose. A wind like water, a wind of winter at her back, so strong that she staggered. But he caught her before she fell.

The wind rose and rose, pushing the flames away from them—driving the fire back on itself.

“Close your eyes,” he said into her ear. “Come with me.”

She did so, and suddenly she saw what he saw. She was the wind, the clouds gathering in the smoky sky, the thick snow of deep winter. She was nothing. She was everything.

The power gathered somewhere in the space between them, between her flickers of awareness. There is no magic. Things are. Or they are not. She was beyond wanting anything. She didn’t care whether she lived or died. She could only feel; the gathering storm, the breath of the wind. Morozko there beside her.

Was that a flake? Another? She could not tell snow from ash, but some quality had changed in the fire’s noise. No—that was snow, and suddenly it was falling as thick as the fiercest of winter blizzards. Faster and faster it fell until all she could see was white, overhead and all around. The flakes cooled her blistered face. Smothered the flames.

She opened her eyes and found herself back in her own skin.

Morozko’s arms fell away from her. The snow blurred his features, but she thought he looked—tentative now, his face full of fearful wonder.

She found she had no words.

So instead she simply leaned back against him, and watched the snow fall. Her scorched throat ached. He did not speak. But he stood still, as though he understood.

For a long time they stood, as the snow fell and fell. Vasya watched the mad beauty of the snowstorm, the dying fire, and Morozko stood as silent as she, as though he was waiting.

“I am sorry,” she said at length, though she didn’t know, quite, what she was sorry for.

“Why, Vasya?” He stirred then, behind her, and one fingertip just touched the base of her throat, where the talisman had lain. “For that? Better the jewel was destroyed. Frost-demons are not meant to live, and the time of my power is over.”

The snow was thinning. She found, when she turned to look at him, that she could see him clearly. “Did you make the jewel, just as Kaschei did?” she asked. “To put your life in mine?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you wanted me to love you?” she asked. “So that my love would help you live?”

“Yes,” he said. “That love of maidens for monsters, that does not fade with time.” He looked weary. “But the rest—I did not count on that.”

“Count on what?”

The pale eyes found hers, inscrutable. “I think you know.”

They measured each other in wary silence. Then Vasya said, “What do you know of Kasyan and of Tamara?”

He sighed a little. “Kasyan was the prince of a far country, gifted with sight, who wished to shape the world to his will. But there were some things even he could not control. He loved a woman, and when she died—he begged me for her life.” Morozko paused, and in the instant of chill silence, Vasya knew what had happened to Kasyan next. She felt unwilling pity.

“That was long ago,” Morozko went on. “I do not know what happened then, for he found a way to set his life apart from his flesh, to keep my hand from him. Forgot—somehow—that he could die, and so did not. Tamara lived with her mother, alone. It is said that Kasyan came to her house one day to buy a horse. Kasyan and Tamara fell in love and fled together. Then they disappeared. Until Tamara appeared alone in Moscow.”

“Where did Tamara come from?” Vasya asked urgently. “Who is she?”

He meant to answer. She could see it in his face. She often wondered, afterward, how her path might have been different, if he had. But at that moment, the monastery bell rang.

The sound seemed to strike Morozko like fists, as though they would break him into snowflakes and send him whirling away. He shook; he did not answer.

“What is happening?” Vasya asked.

The talisman is destroyed, he might have told her. And frost-demons are not meant to love. But he did not say that. “Dawn,” Morozko managed. “I cannot exist anymore under the sun, in Moscow, not after midwinter, when the bells are ringing. Vasya, Tamara—”

The bell rang again, his voice died away.

“No. You cannot fade; you are immortal.” Vasya reached for him, caught his shoulders between her hands. On swift impulse, she reached up and kissed him. “Live,” she said. “You said you loved me. Live.”

She had surprised him. He stared into her eyes, old as winter, young as new-fallen snow, and then suddenly he bent his head and kissed her back. Color came into his face and color washed his eyes until they were the blue of the noonday sky. “I cannot live,” he murmured into her ear. “One cannot be alive and be immortal. But when the wind blows, and storm hangs heavy upon the world, when men die, I will be there. It is enough.”

“That is not enough,” she said.

He said nothing. He was not a man: only a creature of cold rain and black trees and blue frost, growing fainter and fainter in her arms. But he bent his head and kissed her once more, as though the sweetness of it struck a spark of something long since gone dim. But even as he did, he faded.

She tried to call him back. But day was breaking, and a finger of light crept through the clouds to illuminate the char and reek of the half-burnt city.

Then Vasya stood alone.

27. The Day of Forgiveness

Sasha felt, disbelieving, the wind rise, saw the flames retreat and retreat again. Saw the snow blow up from nowhere and begin to fall. All around Dmitrii’s dooryard, voices were raised in thanksgiving.

Marya sat on Solovey’s withers, both small fists tight in the horse’s mane. Solovey snorted and shook his head.

Marya twisted to look up at her uncle. The sky was a deep and living gold, as the light of the great fire was smothered by the snow.

“Did Vasya make the storm?” Marya asked Sasha, softly.

Sasha opened his mouth to reply, realized that he did not know, and fell silent. “Come, Masha,” he said only. “I will take you home.”

They rode back to Olga’s palace through the deserted streets, with the muck of people’s flight slowly covered by fast-falling snow. Marya put out her tongue to taste the whirling snowflakes, and laughed in wonder. They could barely see their hands in front of their faces. Sasha, navigating the streets from memory, was glad to turn in to Olga’s gate, into the meager shelter of the half-deserted dooryard. The gate sagged open and many of the slaves had fled.

The dooryard was deserted, but Sasha heard the faint sound of chanting from the chapel. Well they might give thanks for deliverance. Sasha was about to dismount in the dooryard, but Solovey raised his head and pawed the slush.

The gate hung askew, its guards fled before the fire. A slender figure, alone, swaying, walked through it.

Solovey gave his deep, ringing neigh and jolted into motion. “Aunt Vasya!” Marya cried. “Aunt Vasya!”

Next moment, the great horse was nuzzling carefully over Vasya’s fire-smelling hair. Marya slid down Solovey’s shoulder and tumbled splashing into her aunt’s arms.

Vasya caught Marya, though her face went dead white when she did so, and lowered the child to the ground. “You’re all right,” Vasya whispered to her, holding her tight. Masha was weeping passionately. “You’re all right.”

Sasha slid from the stallion’s back and looked his sister over. The end of Vasya’s plait was singed, her face burned, her eyelashes gone. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she held herself stiffly. “What happened, Vasya?”

“Winter is over,” she said. “And we are all alive.”

She smiled at her brother, and began, in her turn, to cry.

VASYA WOULD NOT GO into the palace, would not leave Solovey. “Olga bade me go, and rightly,” she said. “She will not wish to see me again.”

And so Sasha reluctantly left his sister in the dooryard while he took Marya to find her mother. Olga had not fled the fire. Nor was she abed. She was in the chapel, praying with Varvara and her remaining women. They made a shivering, kneeling flock near the iconostasis.

But the second Marya’s foot stirred the threshold, Olga raised her head. She was pale as death. Varvara caught her, helped her rise, staggering. “Masha!” Olga whispered.

“Mother!” shrieked Marya then, and flew across the intervening space. Olga caught her daughter and embraced her, though her lips went white with pain and Varvara held her up, so that she not crumple to the floor.

“You should be abed, Olya,” said Sasha. Varvara, though she said nothing, looked as if she heartily agreed.

“I came to pray,” Olga returned, gray with exhaustion. “I could do nothing else…What happened?” She ran a feverish hand over her daughter’s hair, holding her close. “Half my slaves fled the fire; the other half I sent looking for her. I was sure she was dead. I had them take Daniil safe away, but I couldn’t—” Olga was not crying; her composure held, but it was a near thing. She stroked her hand again and again over her daughter’s head. “We came back from the bathhouse,” she finished, pale, breathing in short gasps, “and Marya was gone. The nurse had fled, and most of the guards. The city was on fire.”

“Vasya found her,” said Sasha. “Vasya saved her. It is not the child’s fault; she was stolen from her bed. God saved the city, for the wind turned and it began to snow.”

“Where is Vasya?” Olga whispered.

“Outside,” said Sasha wearily, “with her horse. She will not come in. She believes herself unwelcome.”

“Take me to her,” Olga said.

“Olya, you are not fit. Go to bed; I will bring—”

“Take me to her, I said!”

VASYA STOOD IN THE DOORYARD, leaning exhausted against Solovey. She did not know what to do; she did not know where to go. It was like thinking in deep water. Her dress was torn, burned, bloody. Her hair had come straggling out of its plait and hung about her face and throat and body, singed and frizzled at the end.

Solovey lifted his ears first, and then Vasya looked up and saw her brother and sister and niece coming toward her.

She went very still.

Olga was leaning heavily on Sasha’s arm, holding Marya by her other hand. Varvara followed them, frowning. Above Moscow, day was breaking. The clouds of winter had dissipated, and a light, fresh wind drove back the remainder of the smoke. Olga looked younger in the soft morning light. She raised her face to the breeze and a hint of color touched her cheekbones.

“It smells of spring,” she murmured.

Vasya gathered her courage and went to meet them. Solovey walked with her, his nose at her shoulder.

Vasya halted a long pace from her sister and bowed her head.

Silence. Vasya looked up. Solovey had stretched out his nose, delicately, toward her sister.

Olga was looking wide-eyed at the stallion. “This is—your horse?” she asked.

The question was so different from what Vasya expected that sudden laughter rose in her throat. Solovey was nibbling at Olga’s headdress now with a casual air. Varvara looked as though she wanted to tell him off, but hadn’t the nerve.

“Yes,” said Vasya. “This is Solovey.”

Olga reached out a jeweled hand and stroked the stallion’s nose.

Solovey snorted. Olga’s hand fell. She looked again at her sister.

“Come inside,” she said. “You will all come inside. Vasya, you are going to tell us everything.”

VASYA BEGAN WITH THE COMING of the priest to Lesnaya Zemlya and finished with the summoning of the snow. She did not lie, and she did not spare herself. The sun was peeping in the tower windows by the time she finished.

Varvara brought them stew and kept all away. Marya fell asleep, wrapped in a blanket beside the oven. The child would not consent to be taken to bed, and indeed neither her mother, her uncle, nor her aunt wanted her out of their sight.

Vasya’s tale ended, she sat back, her vision swimming with weariness.

There was a small silence. Then Olga said, “What if I don’t believe you, Vasya?”

Vasya returned, “I can offer you two proofs. The first is that Solovey understands the speech of men.”

“He does,” Sasha put in unexpectedly. The monk had sat silent as Vasya talked. “I rode him fighting in the prince’s dooryard. He saved my life.”

“And,” said Vasya, “this dagger was made for me by the winter-king.”

She drew her knife. It lay blue-hilted, pale-bladed in her grip, beautiful and cold, except—Vasya looked closer. Except that a thin drip of water ran off the blade, as though it were an icicle melting in spring…

“Put that ungodly thing away,” Olga snapped.

Vasya sheathed the knife. “Sister,” she said. “I have not lied. Not now. I will go away today—I will not trouble you again. Only I beg—I beg you will forgive me.”

Olya was biting her lips. She looked from her sleeping Marya to Sasha and back to Vasya. She said nothing for a long time.

“And Masha is the same as you?” Olga asked suddenly. “She sees—things? Chyerti?”

“Yes,” Vasya said. “She does.”

“And that is why Kasyan wanted her?”

Vasya nodded.

Olga fell silent again.

The other two waited.

Olga said, slowly, “Then she must be protected. From the evils of sorcerers, and the cruelty of men both. But I do not know how.”

Another long silence. Then Olga looked up, directly at her siblings. “At least I have you to help me.”

Vasya and Sasha were silent, startled.

Then— “Always,” said Vasya, softly. The morning sun slanted across the burned backs of her hands, and put a little color on Olga’s gray-pale one. Vasya felt as though the light had kindled inside her somewhere.

“There will be time for recriminations later,” Olga added. “But there is also the future to plan for. And—and I love you both. Still. Always.”

“That is enough for one day,” said Vasya.

Olga put out her hands; the other two took them, and they sat a moment silent, while the morning sun strengthened outside, chasing winter away.