The Winter of the Witch

1. Marya Morevna

DUSK AT THE END OF winter, and two men crossed the dooryard of a palace scarred by fire. The dooryard was a snowless waste of water and trampled earth; the men sank to their ankles in the muck. But they were speaking intently, heads close together, and did not heed the wet. Behind them lay a palace full of broken furniture, smoke-stained; the screen-work smashed on the staircases. Before them lay a charred ruin that had been a stable.

“Chelubey disappeared in the confusion,” said the first man bitterly. “We were busy saving our own skins.” A smear of soot blackened his cheek, blood crusted in his beard. Weary hollows, like blue thumbprints, marred the flesh beneath his gray eyes. He was barrel-chested, young, with the fey energy of a man who has driven himself past exhaustion to a surreal and persistent wakefulness. Every eye in the dooryard followed him. He was the Grand Prince of Moscow.

“Our skins, and a little more,” said the other man—a monk—with a touch of grim humor. For, against all hope, the city was mostly intact, and still theirs. The night before, the Grand Prince had come close to being deposed and murdered, though few people knew that. His city had nearly burned to ash; only a miraculous snowstorm had saved them. Everyone knew that. A swath of black gashed the heart of the city, as though the hand of God had fallen in the night, dripping fire from its nails.

“It was not enough,” said the Grand Prince. “We may have saved ourselves, but we made no answer for the treachery.” All that bitter day, the prince had reassuring words for every man who caught his eye, had calm orders for the men wrangling his surviving horses and hauling away the charred beams of the stable. But the monk, who knew him well, could see the exhaustion and the rage just beneath the surface. “I am going out myself, tomorrow, with all that can be spared,” the prince said. “We will find the Tatars and we will kill them.”

“Leave Moscow now, Dmitrii Ivanovich?” asked the monk, with a touch of disquiet.

A night and a day without sleep had done nothing for Dmitrii’s temper. “Are you going to tell me otherwise, Brother Aleksandr?” he asked, in a voice that made his attendants flinch.

“The city cannot do without you,” said the monk. “There are dead to mourn; there are granaries lost, and animals and warehouses. Children cannot eat vengeance, Dmitrii Ivanovich.” The monk had no more slept than the Grand Prince; he could not quite mask the edge in his own voice. His left arm was wrapped in linen where an arrow had gone into the muscle below the shoulder, and been dragged through and out again.

“The Tatars attacked me in my own palace, after I had made them welcome in good faith,” retorted Dmitrii, not troubling to keep the rage from his reply. “They conspired with a usurper, they fired my city. Is all that to go unavenged, Brother?”

The Tatars had not, in fact, fired the city. But Brother Aleksandr did not say so. Let that—mistake—be forgotten; it could not be mended now.

Coldly, the Grand Prince added, “Did not your own sister give birth to a dead child in the chaos? A royal infant dead, a swath of the city in ashes—the people will cry out if there is not justice.”

“No amount of spilled blood will bring back my sister’s child,” said Sasha, sharper than he meant. Clear in his mind was his sister’s tearless mourning, worse than any weeping.

Dmitrii’s hand was on the hilt of his sword. “Will you lecture me now, priest?”

Sasha heard the breach between them, scabbed over but unhealed, in the prince’s voice. “I will not,” said Sasha.

Dmitrii, with effort, let go the twining serpents of his sword-hilt.

“How do you mean to find Chelubey’s Tatars?” Sasha asked, trying for reason. “We have pursued them once already, and rode a fortnight without a glimpse, though that was in deepest winter, when the snow took good tracks.”

“But we found them, then,” said Dmitrii, and his gray eyes narrowed. “Did your younger sister survive the night?”

“Yes,” said Sasha warily. “Burns on her face, and a broken rib, Olga says. But she is alive.”

Now Dmitrii looked troubled. Behind him, one of the men clearing away the wreckage dropped the end of a broken roof-beam, swearing. “I would not have come to you in time, if it weren’t for her,” Sasha said to his cousin’s grim profile. “Her blood saved your throne.”

“The blood of many men saved my throne,” snapped Dmitrii without looking round. “She is a liar, and she made a liar of you, the most upright of men.”

Sasha said nothing.

“Ask her,” said Dmitrii, turning. “Ask her how she did it—found the Tatars. It can’t be only sharp eyes; I have dozens of sharp-eyed men. Ask her how she did it, and I will have her rewarded. I do not think any man in Moscow would marry her, but a country boyar might be persuaded. Or enough gold would bribe a convent to take her.” Dmitrii was talking faster and faster, his face uneasy, the words spilling out. “Or she may be sent home in safety—or stay in the terem with her sister. I will see she has enough gold to keep her comfortable. Ask her how she did it, and I will make all straight for her.”

Sasha stared, full of words he could not say. Yesterday she saved your life, slew a wicked magician, set fire to Moscow and then saved it all in a single night. Do you think she will consent to disappear, for the price of a dowry—for any price? Do you know my sister?

But of course, Dmitrii did not. He only knew Vasilii Petrovich, the boy she had pretended to be. They are one and the same. Beneath his bluster Dmitrii must realize that; his unease betrayed him.

A cry from the men around the stable spared Sasha from answering. Dmitrii turned with relief. “Here,” he said, striding over. Sasha trailed, grim-faced, in his wake. A crowd was gathering where two burned roof-beams crossed. “Stand aside—Mother of God, are you sheep at the spring grass? What is it?” The crowd shrank away from the steel in his voice. “Well?” said Dmitrii.

One of the men found his tongue. “There, Gosudar,” he said. He pointed at a gap between two fallen posts, and someone thrust down a torch. An echoing gleam came from below where a shining thing gave back the torchlight. The Grand Prince and his cousin stared, dazzled, doubting.

“Gold?” said Dmitrii. “There?”

“Surely not,” said Sasha. “It would have melted.”

Three men were already hauling aside the timbers that pinned the thing to the earth. A fourth plucked it out and handed it to the Grand Prince.

Gold it was: fine gold, and not melted. It had been forged into heavy links and stiff bars, oddly jointed. The metal had an oily sheen; it threw a shimmer of white and scarlet onto the ring of peering faces and made Sasha uneasy.

Dmitrii held it this way and that, then said, “Ah,” and switched his grip so that he held it by the crownpiece, reins over his wrist. The thing was a bridle. “I have seen this before,” said Dmitrii, eyes alight. An armful of gold was very welcome to a prince whose coffers had been shrunk by bandits and by fire.

“Kasyan Lutovich had it on his mare yesterday,” said Sasha, disliking the reminder of the day before. His eye dwelled with disfavor on the spiked bit. “I would not have blamed her for throwing him.”

“Well, this thing is a forfeit of war,” said Dmitrii. “If only that fine mare herself had not vanished—damn those Tatars for horse-thieves. A hot meal and wine for all you men; well done.” The men cheered raggedly. Dmitrii handed off the bridle to his steward. “Clean it,” the Grand Prince said. “Show it to my wife. It might cheer her. Then see it safely locked away.”

“Is it not strange,” Sasha said warily when the reverent steward had departed, the golden thing in his arms, “that this bridle should have lain in the stable as it burned and yet show no hurt?”

“No,” said Dmitrii, giving his cousin a hard look. “Not odd. Miraculous, coming on the heels of that other miracle: the snowstorm that delivered us. You are to tell anyone who asks exactly that. God spared this golden thing, because he knew our need was great.” The difference between uncanny happenings of the benevolent and the wicked sort was no thicker than rumor, and Dmitrii knew it. “Gold is gold. Now, Brother—” But he fell silent. Sasha had stilled, his head lifted.

“What is that noise?”

A confused murmuring was rising from the city outside: a roar and snap, like water on a rocky shore. Dmitrii frowned. “It sounds like—”

A shout from the gate-guard cut him off.

A LITTLE WAY DOWN the hill of the kremlin, the dusk came earlier, and the shadows fell cold and thick over another palace, smaller and quieter. The fire had not touched it, except for singeing from falling sparks.

All Moscow roiled with rumors, with sobs, curses, arguments, questions, and yet here a fragile order reigned. The lamps were lit; servants gathered what could be spared for the comfort of the impoverished. The horses drowsed in their stable; tidy columns of smoke rose from the chimneys of bakehouse and cookhouse, brewhouse, and the palace itself.

The author of this order was a single woman. She sat in her workroom, upright, impeccable, starkly pale. Sweeping lines of strain framed her mouth, though she was not yet thirty. The dark streaks beneath her eyes rivaled Dmitrii’s. She had gone into the bathhouse the night before and delivered her third child, dead. In that same hour, her firstborn had been stolen, and nearly lost in the horrors of the night.

But despite all that, Olga Vladimirova would not rest. There was too much to be done. A steady stream of people came to her, where she sat by the workroom oven: steward and cook, carpenter, baker, and washerwoman. Each one was dispatched with an assignment and some words of thanks.

A pause came between petitioners, and Olga slumped back in her chair, arms wrapped around her belly, where her unborn child had been. She had dismissed her other women hours ago; they were higher in the terem, sleeping off the shocks of the night. But one person would not go.

“You ought to go to bed, Olya. The household can manage without you until morning.” The speaker was a girl, sitting stiff and watchful on a bench beside the oven. She and the proud Princess of Serpukhov both had long black hair, the plaits wrist-thick, and an elusive similarity of feature. But the princess was delicate, where the girl was tall and long-fingered, her wide eyes arresting in the rough-hewn angles of her face.

“You should indeed,” said another woman, backing into the room bearing bread and cabbage stew. It was Lent; they could not eat fat meat. This woman looked as weary as the other two. Her plait was yellow, just touched with silver, and her eyes were wide and light and clever. “The house is safe for the night. Eat this, both of you.” She began briskly ladling out soup. “And then go to bed.”

Olga said, slow with exhaustion, “This house is safe. But what of the city? Do you think Dmitrii Ivanovich or his poor fool of a wife are sending servants out with bread to feed the children that this night has orphaned?”

The girl sitting on the oven-bench paled, and her teeth sank into her lower lip. She said, “I am sure Dmitrii Ivanovich is making clever plans to take vengeance on the Tatars, and the impoverished will just have to wait. But that does not mean—”

A shriek from above cut her off, and then the sound of hurrying footsteps. All three women glared at the door with identical expressions. What now?

The nurse burst into the room, quivering. Two waiting-women panted in her wake. “Masha,” the nurse gasped. “Masha—she is missing.”

Olga was instantly on her feet. Masha—Marya—was her only daughter, the one who had been stolen from her bed just the night before. “Call in the men,” Olga snapped.

But the younger girl tilted her head, as though she were listening. “No,” said the girl. Every head in the room whipped round. The waiting-women and the nurse exchanged dark glances. “She’s gone outside.”

“Then that—” Olga began, but the other interrupted, “I know where she is. Let me go and get her.”

Olga gave the younger girl a long look, which she returned steadily. The day before, Olga would have said that she’d never trust her mad sister with one of her children.

“Where?” Olga asked.

“The stable.”

“Very well,” said Olga. “But, Vasya, bring Masha back before the lamps are lit. And if she is not there, tell me at once.”

The girl nodded, looking rueful, and got to her feet. Only when she moved could one see that she was favoring one side. She had a broken rib.

VASILISA PETROVNA FOUND MARYA where she’d expected, curled up asleep in the straw of a bay stallion’s stall. The stall door was open, though the stallion was not tied. Vasya entered, but did not wake the child. Instead she leaned against the great horse’s shoulder, pressing her cheek to the silky skin.

The bay stallion put his head around and nosed irrepressibly at her pockets. She smiled, her first real smile of that long day, drew a crust of bread from her sleeve and fed it to him.

“Olga will not rest,” she said. “She puts us all to shame.”

You have not rested either, returned the horse, blowing warm air onto her face.

Vasya, flinching, pushed him away; his hot breath pained the burns on her scalp and cheek. “I do not deserve to rest,” she said. “I caused the fire; I must make what amends I can.”

No, said Solovey, and stamped. The Zhar Ptitsa caused the fire, although you should have listened to me before setting her loose. She was maddened with imprisonment.

“Where did she come from?” Vasya asked. “How did Kasyan, of all people, put a bridle on a creature like that?”

Solovey looked troubled. His ears tilted forward and back, and his tail lashed his flanks. I do not know how. I remember someone shouting, and someone weeping. I remember wings, and blood in blue water. He stamped again, shaking his mane. Nothing more.

He looked so distressed that Vasya scratched the stallion’s withers and said, “Never mind. Kasyan is dead and his horse is gone.” She changed the subject. “The domovoi said Masha was here.”

Of course she’s here, returned the horse, looking superior. Even if she doesn’t know how to speak to me yet, she knows I will kick anyone who tries to hurt her.

This was not an idle threat coming from seventeen hands of stallion.

“I cannot blame her for coming to you,” Vasya said. She scratched the horse’s withers again, and the stallion’s ears flopped with delight. “When I was small, I always ran to the stable at the first sign of trouble. But this is not Lesnaya Zemlya. Olya was frightened when they found her gone. I must take her back.”

The little girl in the straw stirred and whimpered. Vasya dropped gingerly to her knees, trying not to jar her sore side, just as Marya came awake, thrashing. The child’s head butted into Vasya’s ribs, and she narrowly avoided a scream; her vision went black around the edges.

“Hush, Masha,” Vasya said, when she could speak again. “Hush. It’s me. It’s all right. You’re all right. You’re safe.”

The child subsided, rigid in the older girl’s arms. The big horse put down his head and nosed her hair. She looked up. He lipped her nose very gently, and Marya squeaked out a tiny giggle. Then she buried her face in the older girl’s shoulder and wept.

“Vasochka, Vasochka, I don’t remember anything,” she whispered between sobs. “I just remember being scared—”

Vasya remembered being scared, too. At the child’s words, images from the night before crossed her mind like flung darts. A horse of fire, rearing up. The sorcerer withering, crumpling to the floor. Marya ensorcelled, blank-faced, obedient.

And the winter-king’s voice. As I could, I loved you.

Vasya shook her head, as though motion could dispel memory. “You don’t have to remember; not yet,” she said gently to the girl. “You are safe now; it is over.”

“It doesn’t feel like it is over,” whispered the child. “I can’t remember! How do I know if it’s over or not?”

Vasya said, “Trust me, or if you will not, trust your mother or your uncle. No more harm will come to you. Now, come, we must get back to the house. Your mother is worried.”

Marya immediately wrenched away from Vasya, who had little strength to stop her, and wrapped all four limbs around Solovey’s foreleg. “No!” Marya shouted, face pressed to the horse’s coat. “You can’t make me!”

An ordinary horse would have reared at such antics, or shied, or at the very least hit Marya in the face with his knee. Solovey only stood there, looking dubious. Gingerly, he put his head down to Marya. You can stay here if you like, he said, although the child did not understand him. She was crying again: the thin exhausted wail of a child at the end of endurance.

Vasya, sick with pity and anger on the girl’s behalf, understood why Marya did not want to go back to the house. She had been taken from that house, subjected to half-remembered horrors. Solovey’s large and self-confident presence was nothing if not reassuring.

“I have been dreaming,” the little girl mumbled into the stallion’s foreleg. “I can’t remember anything—except for the dreaming. There was a skeleton that laughed at me, and I kept eating cakes—more and more—even though they made me sick. I don’t want to dream anymore. And I’m not going back to the house. I am going to live here in the stable with Solovey.” She renewed her grip on the stallion.

Vasya could see that unless she chose to pry Marya off and drag her away—a procedure that her broken rib wouldn’t bear and Solovey would heartily disapprove of—the girl wasn’t going anywhere.

Well, let someone else explain to an irascible stallion why Marya could not stay where she was. In the meantime— “Very well,” Vasya said, and made her voice cheerful, “no need to go back to the house unless you wish it. Shall I tell you a story?”

Marya’s death-grip on Solovey loosened. “What kind of story?”

“Any story you like. Ivanushka and Alenushka?” Then Vasya’s heart misgave her. Sister, dear sister Alenushka, said the little goat. Swim out, swim out to me. They are lighting the fires, boiling the pots, sharpening the knives. And I am going to die.

But his sister couldn’t help him. For she’d already been drowned herself.

“No, perhaps not that one,” said Vasya hastily and thought. “Ivan the Fool perhaps?”

The child pondered, as though the choice of tales were a momentous one that could change the history of that bitter day. For her sake, Vasya wished it were so.

“I think,” said Marya, “that I would like to hear the story of Marya Morevna.”

Vasya hesitated. As a child, she had loved the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, her own fairy-tale namesake. But the tale of Marya Morevna would cut deep—perhaps too deep—after the night before. Marya wasn’t finished though. “Tell about Ivan,” she said. “That part of the story. About the horses.”

And then Vasya understood. She smiled, and didn’t even care that smiling tugged at the burnt skin on her face.

“Very well. I will tell that part, if you will let go of Solovey’s foreleg. He is not a post.”

Marya let go of Solovey reluctantly, and the stallion lay down in the straw, so that both girls could curl against his warm side. Vasya wrapped Marya and herself in her cloak and began, stroking Marya’s hair:

“Prince Ivan tried three times to rescue his wife, Marya Morevna, from the clutches of the evil sorcerer Kaschei,” she said. “But each time he failed, for Kaschei rode the fastest horse in all the world, and moreover one who understood the speech of men. His horse could outrun Ivan’s, no matter how great his start.”

Solovey snorted out a complacent, hay-scented breath. That horse couldn’t outrun me, he said.

“At last, Ivan bid his wife Marya to ask Kaschei how he had come to ride such a matchless horse.

“ ‘There is a house on chicken legs,’ replied Kaschei. ‘Which stands upon the shore of the sea. A witch lives there: a Baba Yaga, who breeds the finest horses in all the world. You must cross a river of fire to get to her, but I have a magic kerchief that parts the flames. Once you have come to the house, you must ask to serve the Baba Yaga for three days. If you serve her well, she will give you a horse. But if you fail, she will eat you.’ ”

Solovey slanted a thoughtful ear.

“And so Marya, that brave girl”—here Vasya tugged her niece’s black plait, and Marya giggled—“stole Kaschei’s magic handkerchief and gave it to Ivan in secret. And he went away to the Baba Yaga, to win the finest horse in all the world for his own.

“The river of fire was great and terrible. But Ivan crossed it by waving Kaschei’s handkerchief and galloping through the flames. Beyond the fire, he found a little house by the shore of the sea. There lived the Baba Yaga and the finest horses in all the world—”

Here Marya interrupted. “Could they talk? Like you can talk to Solovey? Can you really talk to Solovey? Does he talk to people? Like the Baba Yaga’s horses?”

“He can talk,” said Vasya, putting a hand up to stem the flow of questions. “If you know how to listen. Now hush, let me finish.”

But Marya was already asking her next question. “How did you learn how to listen?”

“I—the man in the stable taught me,” said Vasya. “The vazila. When I was a child.”

“Could I learn?” said Marya. “The man in the stable never talks to me.”

“Yours is not strong,” said Vasya. “They are not strong in Moscow. But—I think you could learn. Your grandmother—my mother—knew a little magic, they say. I have heard a tale that your great-grandmother rode into Moscow on a magnificent horse, gray as the morning. Perhaps she saw chyerti just as you and I do. Perhaps there are other horses, somewhere, just like Solovey. Perhaps we all—”

She was interrupted by a decisive step in the aisle between the stalls. “Perhaps we all,” said Varvara’s dry voice, “are in need of supper. Your sister trusted you to go and get her daughter, and here I find you two rolling in the straw like a couple of peasant boys.”

Marya scrambled to her feet; Vasya followed painfully, trying not to favor her injured side. Solovey stood up with a heave, his ears pricked toward Varvara. The woman gave him a strange look. For an instant, there was a kind of remote longing in her face, as a woman looks upon something she coveted long ago. Then, ignoring the stallion, she said, “Come on, Masha. Vasya can finish your story later. The soup will be cold.”

THE STABLE HAD FILLED UP with shadows in the time Vasya and Marya had been talking. Solovey stood still, ears pricked. “What is it?” Vasya asked the horse.

Can you hear that?

“What?” said Varvara, and Vasya looked at her strangely. Surely she hadn’t…

Marya looked suddenly frightened. “Does Solovey hear someone coming? Someone bad?”

Vasya took the girl’s hand. “I said you are safe and I meant it. If there is any danger, Solovey will take us all galloping far away.”

“All right,” said Marya in a small voice. But she held tight to Vasya’s hand.

They walked out into the blued evening. Solovey went with them, huffing uneasily, his nose at Vasya’s shoulder. The blood-colored sunset had diminished to a faint smear in the west, and the air was still and strange. Outside the thick walls of the stable, Vasya could hear what Solovey had heard: the rush and tramp of many feet and a muted rumble of voices.

“You are right; something is wrong,” said Vasya to the horse, low. “And, curse it, Sasha is not here.” Aloud, she added, “Do not worry, Masha, we are safe here behind the gates.”

“Come on,” said Varvara, and made for the outer door, the anteroom and the stair that would lead them back up to the terem.

2. Reckoning

THE DOORYARD WAS STRANGELY QUIET; the day’s bustle had given way to a heavy calm. Varvara slipped through the outer door of the terem, holding Marya tight by the hand. Vasya turned back at the foot of the stairs, pressed her forehead to Solovey’s silky neck. She wondered why it was so still in the dooryard. Many of Olga’s guards had died or been wounded in the fighting in the Grand Prince’s dvor, but where were her sister’s grooms, her bondsmen? From beyond the gates, the shouting rose. “Wait for me,” she told the horse. “I am going up to my sister, but I’ll come back soon.”

Hurry, Vasya, said the stallion, unease in every line of his body.

Up the stairs to Olga’s workroom. Vasya’s broken rib ran a claw of fire down her side as she climbed. The big, low-ceilinged workroom had a stove for heat, a narrow window for air. It was crowded now; Olga’s attendants had been awakened by the noise. The nurse sat near the stove, clutching Olga’s son, Daniil. The child was eating bread; he was a placid boy, if a bit bewildered. The women were whispering as though they feared to be heard. An air of disquiet had invaded the palace of Serpukhov. Vasya found her blistered palms sweating.

Olga was standing at the narrow window, looking out beyond the dooryard. Marya ran straight to her mother. The princess put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

The hanging lamps threw sinister shadows, quivering with the breeze of Vasya’s entrance. Heads turned, but Vasya only had eyes for her sister, who stood unmoving beside the window.

“Olya?” Vasya asked. The voices in the room sank to hear her. “What is it?”

“Men. With torches,” Olga said, still not turning around.

Vasya saw the women exchanging frightened glances. But still she did not understand. “What are they doing?”

“See for yourself.” Olga’s voice was calm. But she wore layers of chains draped over her breast, hanging from her headdress. The lamplight shimmered on the gold, blindingly, showing the speed of her breathing.

“I would send for the guards,” added Olga. “But we lost so many last night, in the fire, or fighting the Tatars. The rest are at the city-gates; the bondsmen are in the city on errands of mercy. All the men we could spare, and they have not returned. Perhaps some were prevented from coming back, perhaps others heard something we did not.”

Daniil’s nurse clutched the child until he squawked. Marya was watching Vasya with hope and blind trust: the aunt who had a magic horse. Trying not to limp, Vasya crossed to the window. As she passed, a few of the women averted their eyes and crossed themselves.

The street before the gates of Serpukhov was thronged with people. Many bore torches; all of them were shouting. Near the open window, their rising voices came clear at last to Vasya’s straining ears.

“Witch!” they shouted. “Give us the witch! Fire! She set the fire!”

Varvara said flatly to Vasya, “They are here for you,” and Marya said, “Vasochka—Vasochka—do they mean you?” Olga’s arm was stiff, holding her daughter close.

“Yes, Masha,” said Vasya, dry-mouthed. “They do.” The crowd before the gate spread like a river against a rock.

“We must bar the door to the palace,” Olga said. “They might break the gate. Varvara—”

“Have you sent for Sasha?” Vasya interrupted. “For men from the Grand Prince?”

“Whom exactly is she supposed to send?” said Varvara. “All the men were in the city when this started. Curse it. I would have had some warning myself, were I not in the terem all the day, and so weary.”

“I can go,” said Vasya.

“Don’t be a fool,” snapped Varvara. “Do you think you’ll not be recognized? Do you mean to ride that great bay stallion too, that every man, woman, and child in this city will know on sight? I will go, if anyone.”

“No one is going,” said Olga coolly. “Look, we are surrounded.”

Vasya and Varvara turned toward the window again. It was true. The pool of torches had spread.

The women’s whispers were shrill now with fright.

The crowd swelled; people were still streaming in from side-streets. They began pounding on the gate. Vasya could not make out individual faces in the crowd; the torches dazzled her eyes. The dooryard beneath them lay cold and silent.

“Be easy, Vasya,” said Olga. Her face was rigidly calm. “Don’t be frightened, Masha; go and sit by the fire with your brother.” To Varvara— “Take women to help you; put whatever you can find against the door. It will buy time, if they break the gate. The tower was built to withstand Tatars. We will be all right. Sasha and the Grand Prince will get word of the disturbance; men will arrive in time.”

The shimmer of Olga’s golden chains still betrayed her unease.

“If it is me they want—” Vasya began.

Olga cut her off. “Give yourself over? Do you think that can be reasoned with?” A sharp gesture took in the seething mob. Varvara was already chivying women off their benches. The wood was sturdy. It would buy them time. But how much time?

Just then a new voice spoke. “Death,” it whispered.

Vasya turned her head. The voice belonged to Olga’s domovoi, speaking from the oven-mouth. His voice was the whisper of settling ashes after the fire has died.

Every hair on Vasya’s body rose. It is given to the domovoi to know what will happen to his family. In two limping strides, Vasya crossed to the stove. The women stared. Marya’s eyes met Vasya’s in horror; she too had heard the domovoi.

“Oh, what will happen?” Marya cried. She seized Daniil’s bread, making the child wail, and dropped to her knees on the hearth beside Vasya.

“Now Masha—” the nurse began, but Vasya said, “Leave her,” in such a tone that the whole room drew back in fright. Even Olga’s breath whistled out audibly between her teeth.

Marya thrust her bread at the faded domovoi. “Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t say death. You are frightening my brother.”

Her brother could neither hear nor see the domovoi, but Marya in her pride would not admit that she was frightened. “Can you not protect this house?” Vasya asked the domovoi.

“No.” The domovoi was little more than a faint voice, and a shape cast by the ember-light. “The sorcerer is dead; the old woman wanders in darkness. Men have turned their eyes to other gods. There is nothing left to sustain me. To sustain any of us.”

“We are here,” said Vasya, fierce with fear. “We see you. Help us.”

“We see you,” Marya echoed, whispering. Vasya took the child’s hand, held it tight. She had already reopened one of her innumerable cuts from the night before. She smeared a bloody hand on the hot brick in the oven-mouth.

The domovoi shivered and suddenly looked more like a living creature and less like a speaking shadow. “I can buy time,” he breathed. “A little time, but that is all.”

A little time? Vasya was still holding her niece’s hand. The women were massed at their backs, wearing various expressions of fright and condemnation.

“Black magic,” said one. “Olga Vladimirova, surely you see—”

“There is death in our fortunes tonight,” Vasya said to her sister, ignoring the others.

Olga’s face drew into grim lines. “Not if I can help it. Vasya, take the end of the bench; help Varvara bar the door—”

In Vasya’s head beat a swift litany: It is me they want.

Out in the dooryard, Solovey squealed. The gates shook. Varvara stood nearest the door, silent. Her eyes seemed to convey something. Vasya thought she knew what it was.

She knelt, stiffly, to look her niece in the face. “You must always take care of the domovoi,” she said to Marya. “Here—or wherever you are—you must do your best to make him strong, and he will protect the house.”

Marya nodded solemnly, and said, “But Vasochka, what about you? I don’t know enough—”

Vasya kissed her and stood. “You will learn,” she said. “I love you, Masha.” She turned to Olga. “Olya, she—soon, you must send her to Alyosha, at Lesnaya Zemlya. He will understand; he knew me, growing up. Masha cannot stay in this tower, not forever.”

“Vasya—” Olga began. Marya, puzzled, clutched at Vasya’s hand.

“For all of this,” said Vasya, “forgive me.” She let go of Marya’s hand and slipped out the door, which Varvara opened for her. For an instant, their eyes locked in a look of grim understanding.

SOLOVEY WAS WAITING FOR Vasya by the palace door, seemingly calm, save that a white rim showed about his eye. The dooryard was dark. The shouting had grown louder. A splintering crash came from the gate. The light of torches gleamed between the cracking timbers. Her mind was racing. What to do? Solovey, unmistakable, was in danger. They all were: herself, her horse, her family.

Could she and Solovey hide in the stable, the door barred? No—the maddened crowd would make straight for that vulnerable terem-door, for the children inside.

Give herself up? Walk up to them and surrender? Perhaps they would be satisfied, perhaps they would not break in at all.

But Solovey—what would they do to him? Her horse, standing stalwart at her side, would never leave her willingly.

“Come on,” she said. “We are going to hide in the stable.”

Better to run, said the horse. Better to open a gate and run.

“I am not opening any gate to that mob,” Vasya snapped. She made her voice coaxing. “We must buy all the time we can, so that my brother will come, with men from the Grand Prince. The gate will hold long enough. Come, we must hide.”

The horse, uneasy, followed her, while the shouting rose up all around them.

The great double door of the stable was made of heavy wood. Vasya opened it. The horse followed her, huffing uneasily into the dimness.

“Solovey,” Vasya said, drawing the door nearly to. “I love you.”

He nuzzled her hair, careful now of her burns, and said, Don’t be frightened. If they break the gate and come in here, we will just run away. No one will find us.

“Take care of Masha,” said Vasya. “Perhaps one day she will learn to speak to you.”

Vasya, said Solovey, throwing his head up in sudden alarm. But she had already pushed his head away from her, slipped out the narrow opening of the door and shut the stallion securely in the stable.

Behind her she heard the stallion’s furious squeal, heard also the splintering, barely audible over the shouting, of his hooves on the sturdy wood. But even Solovey could not break through the massive door.

She started making her awkward way to the gate, cold and terrified.

The cracks in the gates widened. A single voice soared up into the night, urging the crowd on. In answer, the shouting rose to a greater pitch.

A second time the same voice called, silken, half-singing, cutting through the noise with its purity of tone. The slow, stabbing ache in Vasya’s side worsened. The lamps had been put out in the terem above.

Behind her, Solovey squealed again.

“Witch!” called the powerful voice a third time. It was a summons; it was a threat. The gate was splintering faster by the instant.

This time she recognized the voice. Her breath seemed to leave her body. But when she answered, her voice didn’t shake. “I am here. What do you want?”

At that moment, two things happened. The gate gave way in a shower of splinters. And behind her, Solovey burst the stable door and came galloping through it.

3. Nightingale

THEY WERE NEARER HER THAN Solovey, but nothing was faster than the bay stallion. He was coming for her at full gallop. Vasya saw a final chance. Goad the mob into pursuit; lead it away from her sister’s door. And so, as Solovey flew past her, she timed his stride, running alongside him, and then leaped to his back.

Pain, weakness disappeared in the urgency of the moment. Solovey was charging straight toward the smashed gate. Vasya shouted as they went, drawing the mob’s eyes from the tower. Solovey lashed out with all of a war-stallion’s viciousness, tearing through the crowd. People clawed at them, only to be flung back and away.

Near the gate now. Her whole being was bent on escape. On open ground, nothing could outrace the bay stallion. She could draw them off, buy time, come back with Sasha, with Dmitrii’s guards.

Nothing could outrun Solovey.

Nothing.

She never saw what hit them. It might have been only a log meant for someone’s fireplace. All she heard was the hiss as it swung, and then she felt the shock, vibrating through the stallion’s flesh, as the blow landed. Solovey’s leg went sideways. He fell, a stride before the ruined gate.

The crowd shrieked. Vasya felt the crack like a wound herself. Instinct rolled her clear, then she was kneeling at the horse’s head.

“Solovey,” she whispered. “Solovey, get up.”

People pressed nearer; a hand seized her hair. She whipped round and bit it; the owner swore and fell back. The stallion struggled, kicking, but his hind leg lay at a terrible angle.

“Solovey,” Vasya whispered. “Solovey, please.”

The stallion breathed a soft, hay-scented breath into her face. He seemed to shudder, and the mane pouring over her hands felt spiky as feathers. As though his other, stranger nature, the bird she’d never seen, was going to fight free at last and take wing.

Then a blade came down.

It bit into the horse just where his head met his body. A howl went up.

Vasya felt the blade go through the stallion just as though it had cut her own throat, and she did not know she was screaming as she whirled like a wolf protecting her cub.

“Kill her!” cried someone in the crowd. “There she is—the unnatural bitch. Kill her.”

Vasya launched herself at them, heedless of anything, careless of her own life. Then a man’s fist fell on her, and another, until she could not feel them at all.

SHE WAS KNEELING IN a starlit forest. The world was black and white and quite still. A brown bird fluttered in the snow just out of reach. A figure, black-haired and bone-pale, knelt beside it, extending a cupped hand toward the creature.

She knew that hand; knew this place. She thought she could even see feeling behind the ancient indifference in the death-god’s eyes. But he was looking at the bird, not at her, and she could not be sure. He was stranger and farther away than he had ever been, his whole attention fixed on the nightingale in the snow.

“Take us together,” she whispered.

He did not turn.

“Let me come with you,” she tried again. “Let me not lose my horse.” Far away, she could feel the blows on her body.

The nightingale hopped into the death-god’s hand. He closed his fingers delicately about the creature, picked it up. With his other hand, he scooped up a handful of snow. The snow melted to water in his hand; it dripped upon the bird, who at once went still and stiff.

Then, at last, he raised his eyes to hers. “Vasya,” he said, in a voice she knew. “Vasya, listen to me—”

But she could not reply.

For in the true world, the crowd drew back at a word from a man’s thunderous voice, and she was wrenched back to nighttime Moscow, bleeding in the trampled snow, but alive.

Perhaps she only imagined it. But when she opened her blood-smeared eyes, the death-god’s dark figure was still beside her, fainter than a noontime shadow, eyes urgent and quite helpless. He held the stiff body of a nightingale most tenderly in one hand.

Then he was gone. He might never have been there at all. She was lying across the body of her horse, sticky with his blood. Above her stood a man with golden hair, his eyes blue as midsummer. He wore the cassock of a priest and was looking at her with an expression of cold and steady triumph.

THROUGH ALL THE LONG ROADS and the griefs of his life, Konstantin Nikonovich had one gift that had never failed him. When he spoke, crowds grew pliant at the sound of his voice.

All that night, while the midnight snowstorm raged, he’d said extreme unction for the dying and comforted the wounded.

Then, in the black hour before dawn, he spoke to the people of Moscow.

“I cannot be silent,” he said.

At first his voice was low and gentle, addressing now this person, now that. As they began to pool about him, like water in the hollow of his hand, he raised his voice. “A great wrong has been done you.”

“Done us?” asked the soot-smeared, frightened people. “What wrong has been done us?”

“This fire was God’s punishment,” said Konstantin. “But the crime was not yours.”

“Crime?” they asked, uneasy, clutching their children.

“Why do you think the city burned?” Konstantin demanded. Real sorrow thickened his voice. Children, smothered with smoke, had died in their mothers’ arms. He could grieve for that. He was not so far gone. His words were hoarse with feeling. “The fire was God’s punishment for the harboring of a witch.”

“A witch?” they asked. “Have we harbored a witch?”

Konstantin’s voice rose. “Surely you remember? The one you thought was called Vasilii Petrovich? The boy—who was in truth a girl? Remember Aleksandr Peresvet, whom all men thought so holy, tempted into sin by his own sister? Remember how she deceived the Grand Prince? That very night the city caught fire.”

As he spoke, Konstantin felt their mood shift. Their rage and grief and fright were turning outward. He encouraged them in this, deliberately, deftly, like a blacksmith putting an edge on a sword-blade.

When they were ready, he had only to take up the weapon.

“Justice must be done,” said Konstantin. “But I know not how. Perhaps God will know.”

NOW SHE LAY IN her sister’s dooryard with the blood of her horse drying on her hands. Her own blood stained lip and cheek and her eyes were full of tears. She breathed in wrenching gasps. But she was alive. She crawled gracelessly to her feet.

“Batyushka,” she said. The word cracked her lip anew and set the blood seeping down. “Call them back.” Her breaths came quick and painful between words. “Pull them back. You have killed my horse. Not—my sister. Not the children.”

The crowd spilled around and past them, their bloodlust unslaked. They were beating at the door of the palace of Serpukhov. The door was holding, just. Konstantin hesitated.

Low she added, “Twice I saved your life.” She could barely stand.

Konstantin knew himself powerful, riding the crowd’s fury, like a rider on a half-tamed horse. Abruptly he put his hand to the reins. “Back!” he cried to his followers. “Get back! The witch is here. We have taken her. Justice must be done; God will not wait.”

She shut her eyes in relief. Or perhaps it was weakness. She did not fall at his feet; she did not thank him for his mercy. Venomously, he said, “You will come with me and answer to God’s justice.”

She opened her eyes again, stared at him, but did not seem to see. Her lips moved in a single word. Not his name, not a plea for mercy, but, “Solovey…” Her body bent suddenly, with grief more than pain, bowed as though she’d been arrow-shot.

“The horse is dead,” he said, and saw her take the words like fists. “Perhaps now you will turn your mind to things proper for a woman. In the time that is left to you.”

She said nothing, her eyes lost.

“Your fate is decided,” Konstantin added, bending nearer, as though he could force the words through her mind. “The people have been wronged; they want justice.”

“What fate is that?” she whispered through bruised lips. Her face was the color of the snow.

“I advise you,” he whispered, gently, “to pray.”

She threw herself at him, like a creature wounded. He almost laughed with unlooked-for joy, when a blow from another man’s fist flung her down, crumpled at his feet.

4. The Fate of All Witches

“WHAT IS THAT NOISE?” DMITRII demanded. Few of his gate-guards had survived the night unwounded; the few that had all seemed to be shouting. Outside the walls of his palace came a tumult of voices and the sound of many feet in the snow. The only light in his dooryard was torchlight. The noise in the city rose steadily; there came a shattering crash. “Mother of God,” said Dmitrii. “Have we not had trouble enough already?” He turned his head to snap swift orders.

Next moment, the postern opened amid a flurry of shouting. A servant with yellow hair strode without diffidence up to the Grand Prince, trailing Dmitrii’s bewildered retainers in her wake.

“What is this?” Dmitrii demanded, staring.

“That is my sister’s body-servant,” said Sasha. “Varvara, what do—”

Varvara had a bruised cheek, and her expression chilled him to the marrow.

“Those people you hear,” Varvara snapped, “have broken the gates of the palace of Serpukhov. They killed the bay stallion that Vasilisa loved”—here Sasha began to feel the blood draining from his face—“and they have dragged off the girl herself.”

“Where?” said Sasha, his voice remote and terrible.

Beside him, Dmitrii was already calling for horses, for men-at-arms: “—Yes, even if they are wounded, get them on horses, it cannot wait.”

“Down,” said Varvara, panting. “Down toward the river. I fear they mean to kill her.”

VASYA WAS NEARLY SENSELESS with the mob’s fists, her clothes torn and bloodied. She was borne along, half-dragged, half-carried, and the world was full of noise: shouting, a cold, beautiful voice controlling the crowd, and the word, endlessly murmured—Father. Batyushka.

Down, they were going downhill; she stumbled in the hardened slush of the street. Hands—many hands—scoured her body; her cloak and letnik had been ripped away, leaving her in her long-sleeved shift, her kerchief gone, her hair falling about her face.

She was barely aware of it. She was locked in a single memory: the impact of a club, a blade, the shock that ran through her own body. Solovey. Mother of God, Solovey. As the mob raged, all she could see was the horse, lying in the snow, all the love and the grace and the strength broken and muddied and stilled.

More people were tearing at her clothes; she knocked one groping hand aside, and a fish-smelling fist struck her across the face, bringing her teeth together. Pain like stars exploded on her mouth; the neck of her shift tore. Konstantin’s even voice remonstrated, too late, with the crowd. They drew back, a little chastened.

Still they dragged her downhill. All around was torchlight, throwing sparks across her sight. “Finally frightened?” Konstantin murmured to her under his breath, his eyes bright, as though he had bested her at some sport.

She hurled herself at him a second time, in a rush of rage that swallowed up her pain.

Perhaps she was trying to get them to kill her. They nearly did. Konstantin let the crowd punish her. A gray fog slipped slyly over her sight, but still she did not die, and when she came back to herself, she realized that they had borne her past the gates of the kremlin. Now they were in the posad, the part of Moscow that lay outside the walls. Still hurrying; they were going down to the river. A little chapel loomed up. They paused there for a swift debate. Konstantin spoke, though she caught only a word here and there.

Witch.

Holy father.

Bring wood.

She wasn’t really listening. Her senses were numb. They had not harmed her sister, they had not harmed Marya. Her horse was dead. She cared not what they did with her. She did not care for anything.

She felt the change in the air, when she was thrust from the beating, insistent torchlight into the darkness of a candlelit chapel. She tumbled to the floor not far from the iconostasis, jarring her torn mouth.

There she lay, breathing the smell of dusty wood, passive with shock. Then she thought that she might try to rise at least, stand with a little courage. A little pride. Solovey would have. Solovey…

She dragged herself to her feet.

And found herself alone, and face-to-face, with Konstantin Nikonovich. The priest had his back to the door, half the length of the nave between them. He was watching her.

“You killed my horse,” she whispered, and he smiled, just a little.

SHE HAD A CUT ACROSS her nose; one eye was swelling shut. In the half-light of the chapel, her bruised face looked more unearthly than ever, and more vulnerable. The old desire flared, and the accompanying self-hatred.

But—why should he be ashamed? God cared not for men and women. All that mattered was his own will, and she was in his power. The thought heated his blood, as much as the worship of the crowd outside. His eyes swept her body again.

“You have been condemned to die,” he told her. “For your sins. You have been granted these few moments to pray.”

Her face did not change. Perhaps she had not heard. He spoke louder. “It is the law of God, and the will of the people, whom you have wronged!”

Her face was salt-white, so that each faint freckle stood out on her nose like spots of blood. “Kill me then,” she said. “Have the courage to do it yourself, not leave it to a mob and call it justice.”

“Do you deny then that the fire was of your making?” Lightly, he stepped toward her. Free, he told himself. Free at last of her power over him.

Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t speak. She didn’t move even when he curled his fingers behind the bone of her jaw and lifted her face to his. “You cannot deny it,” he said. “Because it is true.”

She didn’t flinch when he pressed his thumb into the bruises blossoming flowerlike along her mouth. She barely seemed to see him.

She really was ugly. Big eyes, wide mouth, the jutting bones. But he could not look away. He wouldn’t ever be able to look away, not until those eyes closed in death. Perhaps even beyond she would haunt him.

“You took all that mattered from me,” he said. “You cursed me with demons. You deserve death.”

She made no reply. Tears ran unheeded down her face.

In sudden rage, he caught her shoulders, drove her against the iconostasis, so that all the saints shook, and pinned her there. The breath left her body, any vestige of color left her face. His hand closed on her throat, pale and vulnerable, and he found himself breathing fast. “Look at me, damn you.”

Slowly, her eyes focused on his face.

“Beg for your life,” he said. “Beg, and perhaps I will grant it you.”

She shook her head slowly, her eyes dazed and wandering.

He felt a surge of hatred; he bent his lips to her ear and whispered in a voice even he hardly recognized, “You will die in the fire, Vasilisa Petrovna. And you will scream for me, before the end.” He kissed her once, hard as a blow, holding her jaw in a vise-grip and tasting the blood on her split lip.

She bit him, bloodying his mouth in turn. He recoiled, and then they were staring at each other, with the hatred of each mirrored in the other’s eyes.

“God go with you,” she whispered, in bitter mockery.

“Go to the devil,” he said, and left her.

SILENCE FELL IN THE DUSTY CHAPEL, after Konstantin left. Perhaps they were building a pyre, perhaps they were readying something worse. Perhaps her brother would come at last, and this nightmare would be over. Vasya didn’t care. What had she to fear, in dying? Perhaps, beyond life, she would find her father again, her mother, her beloved nurse Dunya.

Solovey.

But then she thought of fire, of whips and knives and fists. She was not dead yet; she was terrified. Perhaps she could just—step away—walk into the gray forest beyond life and be gone. Death was someone she knew.

“Morozko,” Vasya whispered, and then his older name, the name of the death-god, “Karachun.”

No answer. Winter was over; he had faded away from the world of men. Shivering, she sank to the floor, leaned against the iconostasis. Outside people shouted, laughed, swore. But in that chapel, there was only the silence of the saints in the icon-screen, staring steadily down. Vasya could not bring herself to pray. Instead she tipped her aching head back and shut her eyes, measuring out her life in heartbeats.

She could not have slept, not there. Yet somehow the world faded away and she found herself walking once more in the black forest beneath a starry sky. She knew a dim, shocked relief. It was over. God had heard her plea; this was what she longed for. She stumbled forward, calling.

“Father,” she cried. “Mother. Dunya. Solovey. Solovey!” Surely he would be here. Surely he had waited for her. If he could.

Morozko would know. But Morozko wasn’t there; only silence met her cry. She struggled on, scrabbling, but her limbs were so heavy, and her ribs hurt worse and worse with every breath.

“Vasya.” He called her name twice before she heard. “Vasya.”

She tripped and fell before she could turn, found herself kneeling in the snow without the strength to rise. The sky was a river of stars, but she didn’t look up. The death-god was the only thing she could see. He was little more than a confluence of light and dark, wispy as cloud across the moon. But she knew his eyes. He was waiting for her, in the gray forest. She was not alone.

Between gasps she managed, “Where is Solovey?”

“Gone,” he said. There was no comfort in the death-god, not here; there was only the knowledge of her loss, echoed in his pale eyes.

She did not know such a sound of agony could come from her throat. Mastering it, she whispered, “Please. Take me with you. They are going to kill me tonight and I do not—”

“No,” he said. The faintest of pine-tinged breezes seemed to touch her bruised face. He wore his indifference like armor, but it was wavering. “Vasya, I—”

“Please,” she said. “They killed my horse. There is only the fire now.”

He reached out to her, just as she reached back, through whatever memory or illusion or walls divided them, but it was like touching a wisp of mist.

“Listen to me,” he said, mastering himself. “Listen.”

She lifted her head with effort. Why, listen? Why couldn’t she just go? But the bonds of her body called her; she could not win free. The faces of the icons seemed to be trying to break in upon her sight and come between them. “I wasn’t strong enough,” he said. “I have done what I could; I hope—it may be enough. You won’t see me again. But you will live. You must live.”

“What?” she whispered. “How? Why? I am about to—”

But icons were thrusting themselves before her eyes, more real than the faint death-god. “Live,” he said to her again. And then he was gone a second time. She was awake, alone, lying on the cold, dusty floor of a church, still, horribly, alive.

Alone, save for Konstantin Nikonovich. He was saying, over her head, “Get up. You have missed your chance to pray.”

HER HANDS WERE ROUGHLY bound behind her back; a few men came up at Konstantin’s beck and made a square around her. They weren’t anything like soldiers; they were peasants or tradesmen, ruddy and determined. One held an ax, another a scythe.

Konstantin’s face was white and set; their eyes met once, in a look of pure violence, before he looked away, serene, his lips set in the austere lines of a man doing his duty to his faith.

The crowd was thick about the chapel, lining the road that wound down to the river. They had torches in their hands. They smelled like cooking and char and old wounds and sweat. The nighttime wind scoured her skin. They took away her shoes—for penitence, they said. Her feet scraped and throbbed on the snow. Triumph in their faces; naked worship of the priest, naked hatred of her. They spat on her.

Witch, she heard again and again. She set fire to the city. Witch.

Vasya had never been so frightened. Where was her brother? Perhaps he could not get through the mob; perhaps he feared the people’s madness. Perhaps Dmitrii thought her life a small price to quiet his raging city.

She was prodded forward, stumbling. Konstantin walked beside her, head piously bent. The red light of the torches leaped before her eyes and blinded them.

“Batyushka,” she said.

Konstantin broke off. “Beg me now?” he breathed, below the roar of the crowd.

She did not speak; she had all she could do to fight the panic that was threatening to madden her. Then she said, “Not like this. Not—in fire.”

He shook his head, and gave her a half-smile; quick, almost confiding. “Why? Did you not condemn Moscow to burn?”

She said nothing.

“The devils whispered,” said the priest. “At least I can get some good of your curse; the devils spoke true. They whispered of a maiden with a witch’s gifts, and a monster all of fire. I didn’t even have to lie, when I told the people of your crime. You should have thought of that before you cursed me with the ears to hear them.”

With visible effort, he turned away from her and resumed his praying. His face was the color of linen, but his steps were steady. He seemed transfixed by the crowd’s rage, consumed by what he himself had summoned.

Vasya’s vision took on a black-and-white clarity, grim and shocking. The air was cold on her face; her feet burned as they began to freeze in the snow. Moscow’s smoke-tinged air ran quicksilver through her veins, drawn in with each panicked breath.

Before her, on the ice of the Moskva, massed a sea of upturned faces, snarling or weeping, or merely watching. Down on the river stood a stack of logs, illuminated on all sides with torches. A pyre, hastily constructed. And atop it, stark against the sky, the cage of the condemned, lashed down with many ropes. The crowd made a low, continuous sound now, like the growl of an animal rising.

“Forget the cage,” Vasya said to Konstantin. “These people will tear me to pieces before I get there.”

The look he gave her was almost pitying, and she suddenly understood why he walked beside her, why also he prayed with that calculated grace. This was Lesnaya Zemlya writ large; he had gathered them up in their grief and terror, gathered them into his hand with his golden voice and his golden hair, so that they became a weapon in his grip, a tool of vengeance, and a sop to his pride. They would not attack while he was with her, and he wanted to see her burn. He had been cheated of it, after all, the night before. Always, always she had underestimated the priest.

“Monster,” she said, and he almost smiled.

Then they were down on the ice itself. A shriek went up like a dozen dying rabbits. The people were pressing close about her now, spitting and striking. Her guards could barely keep them back. A stone came whistling through and cut her cheek, gashed it deep. She put a hand to her face and blood spilled through her fingers.

Dazed now, she twisted her head one more time to look at Moscow. No sign of her brother. But she saw the devils, despite the dark. They were silhouetted atop roofs and walls: domoviye and dvoroviye and banniki, the faint house-spirits of Moscow. They were there, but what could they do but watch? Chyerti are formed of the currents of human life; they ride them, but they do not interfere.

Except two. But one was her enemy, the other was far away, made nearly powerless by spring and by her own hand. The most she could hope for from him was a death without agony. She held that hope in a desperate grip as they prodded and shouted and chivied her toward the pyre. Across the ice, through a narrow corridor in the throng. Tears poured down her face now, from her own helplessness, and an involuntary reaction against their hatred.

Perhaps there was some justice in it. Again and again, she saw folk limping, burned, with bandages on their arms or faces. But I did not mean to free the firebird, she thought. I did not know what would happen. I did not know.

The ice was still hard, as thick as a man was tall, shining in spots where wind or sledges had swept away the snow. It would be a long time still until the river released its bonds. Will I live to see it? Vasya wondered. Will I feel sun on my skin again? I think not, I think—

The crowd ebbed and surged around the pyre. Konstantin’s golden hair turned gray-silver in the torchlight, his face a maelstrom of triumph, anguish, lust. His voice and his presence were undiminished, but now his power was divorced from the restraining impulses of religion. Vasya wished suddenly that she could warn her brother, warn Dmitrii. Sasha, you know what he did to Marya. Do not trust him, do not—

Then she thought: Sasha, where are you?

But her brother was not there, and Konstantin Nikonovich was bending his eyes down to hers for the last time. He had won.

“What will you say to the God you despise,” Vasya whispered, breathing short and thin with fear, “when you go into the darkness? All men must die.”

Konstantin only smiled at her again, lifted his hand to make the sign of the cross, raised his deep voice to intone a prayer. The crowd fell silent to hear him. Then he bent forward to whisper in her ear. “There is no God.”

Then they were dragging her up, and she was struggling like a wild thing in a trap: pure instinct, but the man was stronger than she was, and her arms were bound, the blood ran down her fingertips where the ropes bit into her thrashing wrists. They forced her up, and Vasya thought, Mother of God it is happening.

Dying, she thought, ought to bring some sense of completion, of a journey ended. But this was just being caught out of life, as she was, with all her sweat and tears and terrors, her wishes and regrets.

The cage was small enough that she would have to crouch inside it. A blade at her back prodded her forward. The barred wooden door slammed, was tied securely shut.

Vasya’s sight fractured with fear. The world became a series of disjointed impressions: the black, fire-lit mass of the crowd; a last glimpse of sky; and memories, of her childhood in the forest, of her family, of Solovey.

The men were tossing torches onto the wood. Smoke billowed, and then the first log caught, crackling. For an instant, her eyes found the stark-white face of Konstantin Nikonovich. He lifted his hand. The hunger, the grief, the joy in his gaze was for her alone. Then a curl of smoke blotted him out.

She wrapped both hands around the bars. Splinters stabbed into her fingers. The smoke stung her face and set her coughing. Somewhere dim and far away, she thought she heard hoofbeats, new voices calling, but they were in another world; her world was made of fire.

Many say, better to die, until the time comes to actually do it, Morozko had told her once. He was right. The heat was already unbearable. But he was nowhere to be seen; there was no refuge for her yet in the forest beyond life.

She couldn’t breathe.

My grandmother came to Moscow and never left. Now it is my turn. I am never going to leave this cage. I will be ash on the wind, and I will never see my family again…

Rage filled her suddenly; it opened her eyes, sent her back, crouching, to her feet. Never? All those hours, those memories stolen by one mad priest, who had seen his chance for vengeance and taken it? Would they say of her one day, She never left; her tale ended there on the ice? And what of Marya? Brave, doomed Marya? Perhaps Konstantin would turn on her next, the witch-child who knew his crime.

There was no way out. She was crouched on the floor of a locked cage, flames rising all around, burning her already-blistered face. There was no way out, save by dying. The cage would not break. It was impossible.

Impossible.

Morozko had said that when she dragged him against hope into the inferno that was Moscow.

Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it.

On a surge of blind will, Vasilisa Petrovna set her hands onto the thick, burning-hot bars of her cage, and pulled.

The heavy wood broke apart.

Vasya clung, disbelieving, to the new-made gap. Her vision was graying. The cage smoldered; beyond hung a curtain of fire. What matter if she’d broken the bars? The fire would take her. If by some miracle it did not, then she’d be torn apart by the crowd.

But still she crawled out of the cage, put her hands, then her face, into the fire, got to her feet. An instant she stood there, wavering, beyond fear, untouched by the flames. She’d forgotten they could burn her.

And then she leaped down.

Down through the flames of her own funeral pyre; she struck the snow and rolled, sweating, sooty, bloody. A soundless cry went up from all the watching chyerti. She was blistered, but not on fire.

Alive.

Vasya scrambled up, looking wildly about her, but no one cried out; Konstantin—everyone—was still watching the fire, as though she had not come hurtling down at all. It was like being a ghost. Was she dead? Had she fallen into another world, like a devil that could not touch the earth, but only live above or beneath it? Dimly, she thought she heard the sound of hoofbeats getting louder, thought she heard a familiar voice shouting her name.

But she didn’t heed. For a different voice spoke, low and amused, seemingly in her ear. “Well,” it said, “I thought I was beyond surprising.”

And then it laughed.

VASYA WHIPPED HER HEAD AROUND, fell sprawling into the melted slush. The haze of smoke choked her; the air rippled like cloth in the heat, made formless shadows of the ring of people. Still they didn’t see her. Perhaps she had died, or fallen in truth into a world of devils. She couldn’t feel her wounds, only her weakness. Nothing seemed real. Certainly not the man standing over her.

Not a man. A chyert.

“You,” she whispered.

He stood too close to the fire and should have been scorched, but wasn’t. His single eye glittered in a face seamed with blue scars.

The last time she’d seen him, he had killed her father.

“Vasilisa Petrovna,” said the chyert called Medved.

Vasya lurched to her feet, caught between the devil and the fire. “No. You’re not here, you cannot be here.”

He did not answer in words, but caught her chin in his hand, tilted her face up to his. The lid of his missing eye was sewn shut. His thick fingers smelled of carrion and hot metal and were quite real. He grinned down at her. “No?”

She wrenched back, wild-eyed. There was blood from her split lip on his fingers; he licked it off and added, confidingly, “Tell me: how long do you think your newfound power will avail you?” He cast an appraising eye upon the mob. “They are going to tear you to pieces.”

“You—were bound,” Vasya whispered, in the voice of a girl in a nightmare. It could have been a nightmare. The Bear had haunted her dreams since her father died, and now they stood face-to-face in a storm of smoke and red light. “You cannot be here.”

“Bound?” said the Bear. In the single gray eye flashed a memory of fury; his snarling shadow was not the shadow of a man. “Oh, yes,” he added, with irony. “You and your father bound me, with the help of my skulking twin.” He bared his teeth. “Aren’t you fortunate that I am free? I am going to save your life.”

She stared. Reality wavered like the air around the fire.

“Perhaps I am not the savior you want,” added the Bear, sly now, “but my noble brother could not come himself. You shattered his power when you shattered his blue jewel; and then spring came. He is less than a ghost. So he freed me and sent me. Went to a lot of trouble, really.” The single eye slid over her skin, and he pursed his lips. “No accounting for taste.”

“No,” was all she could manage. “He would not.” She was going to be sick, from terror and shock, from the animal-stink of the half-seen crowd, concealed by smoke.

The chyert reached into his ragged sleeve. With a look of distaste, he thrust a palm-sized wooden bird into her hand. “He gave me this to give you. A token. He traded his freedom for your life. Now we must go.”

The words seemed to run together in her mind; she couldn’t make sense of them. The wooden bird was carved, agonizingly, to look like a nightingale. She had seen the winter-king, the Bear’s brother, carving a bird once, beneath a spruce tree in the snow. Her hand closed about the carving even as she said, “You’re lying. You didn’t save my life.” She wished for a drink of water. She wished she could wake up.

“Not yet,” the Bear said and glanced up at the burning cage. The mockery vanished from his face. “But you will not escape the city, unless you come with me.” He caught her hand suddenly, grip sure. “The bargain was for your life. I have sworn it, Vasilisa Petrovna. Come. Now.”

Not a dream. Not a dream. He killed my father. She licked her lips, forced her voice to work. “If you are free, what will you do after you save my life?”

His scarred mouth quirked. “Stay with me and find out.”

“Never.”

“Very well. Then I will see you safe, as I promised, and the rest doesn’t concern you.”

He was a monster. But she didn’t think he was lying. Why would the winter-king do such a thing? Was she now to owe this monster her life? What would that make him? What would that make her?

With death all around her, Vasya hesitated. Shrieks rose suddenly from the crowd and she flinched, but they were not screaming at her. A mass of horsemen was beating a way through the mob. Eyes turned from the fire to the riders; even Medved glanced up.

Vasya jerked herself away and ran. She didn’t look back, for if she did, she would stop, would yield in her despair to her enemy’s promises or to the death still beating at her back. As she ran, she tried to be like a ghost, like a chyert herself. Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it. And perhaps it worked. No one called out; no one so much as glanced in her direction.

“Fool,” said the Bear. His voice was in her ear, though a whole mass of people stood between them. His weary amusement was worse than rage. “I am telling you the truth. That is what frightens you.” Still she darted through the crowd, a fire-smelling ghost, trying not to hear that dry, metallic voice. “I will let them kill you,” said the Bear. “You can leave here with me, or you will not leave at all.”

That she believed. Still she ran, sinking herself deeper in the crowd, sick with terror, sick at the stink, expecting every instant to be seen, to be seized. The carved nightingale felt cold and solid in her sweaty fist: a promise she didn’t understand.

And then the Bear’s voice was raised up again, not directed at her. “Look! Look—what is that? A ghost—no—it is she the witch; she has escaped the fire! Magic! Black sorcery! She is there! She is there!”

Vasya realized with horror that the crowd could hear him. A head turned. Then another. They could see her. A woman screamed, just as a hand closed on Vasya’s arm. She pulled away, thrashing, but the hand only tightened its grip. Then a cloak was flung over her shoulders, concealing her blackened shift. A familiar voice spoke in her ear, even as the hand dragged her deeper into the crowd. “This way,” it said.

Vasya’s savior yanked the hood over the girl’s charred hair, hiding everything except her feet. The crush of people hid them; most people were trying not to be trampled. It was too dark to see her red footprints. Behind her the Bear’s voice rose, savage now: “There! There!”

But even he could not guide a crowd in such confusion. Sasha and Dmitrii and the Grand Prince’s riders had finally arrived, had won their way through to the pyre, shouting. They tore the burning logs away, swearing as they scorched their hands; one man caught fire and shrieked. All around Vasya, people were surging, fleeing, crying out that they had seen the witch’s ghost, that they had seen the witch herself, escaped from the fire. No one remarked a skinny girl, stumbling in a cloak.

Her brother’s voice soared over the din; she thought she heard the strident tones of Dmitrii Ivanovich. The crowd surged backward from the riders. I must go to my brother, Vasya thought. But she could not bring herself to turn; her every sense was bent on escape, and somewhere at her back was the Bear…

The hand on her arm continued to drag her along. “Come,” said that familiar voice. “Hurry.”

Vasya lifted her head, stared uncomprehending into Varvara’s grim, bruised face.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

“A message,” said Varvara jerkily, still dragging her.

She didn’t understand. “Marya,” Vasya managed. “Are Olga and Marya—”

“Alive,” said Varvara, and Vasya sagged in gratitude. “Unhurt. Come.” She pulled Vasya on, half-carrying her through the retreating crowd. “You have to leave the city.”

“Leave?” Vasya whispered. “How? I have—I have not…”

Solovey. She could not form the word; grief would take the last of her strength.

“You do not need the horse,” said Varvara, voice hard. “Come.”

Vasya said nothing more; she was fighting a desperate battle to stay conscious. The ends of her ribs ground together. Her bare feet didn’t hurt anymore, numbed on the ice. But they didn’t work very well either, and so she stumbled and stumbled again, until Varvara’s arm was the only thing keeping her from falling.

The crowd churned behind them, scattering under the whips of Dmitrii’s men-at-arms. A voice called to Varvara, asking if the girl was sick, and Vasya felt a new bolt of terror.

Varvara returned a cool explanation, of a niece who’d fainted with the bloodletting, and all the while her hand made more bruises on Vasya’s arm as she dragged her up from the riverbank and into the darkness of the sapling woods that grew beside the posad. Vasya tried to understand what was happening.

Varvara halted abruptly near an oak-sapling, bare with the end of winter. “Polunochnitsa,” she said to the dark.

Vasya knew a person—a devil—called Polunochnitsa, Lady Midnight. But what could her sister’s body-servant know of—

The Bear loomed out of the shadows, firelight striping his face. Vasya wrenched back. Varvara followed her gaze, her eyes darting into the dark like a blind woman’s. “Do you think I’d lose you in this?” the Bear demanded, half-angry, half-amused. “You reek of terror. I could follow that anywhere.”

Varvara could not see him, but her hand tightened convulsively on Vasya’s arm. Vasya realized that she had heard him. “Eater,” Varvara breathed. “Here? Midnight.” The voices of the dispersing mob filtered up from the river below.

The Bear shot Varvara a speculative look. “You’re the other one, aren’t you? I forgot the old woman had twins. How did you contrive to live so long?”

Vasya thought the words should make some kind of sense, but understanding slipped away before she could seize it. To Vasya, the Bear added, “She means to send you through Midnight. I wouldn’t, if I were you. You will die there, just as surely as in the fire.”

The voices of the crowd came closer as the people cut through the woods back to the posad. In moments, someone would see them, and then…Torches threw flickers of light through the scraggly trees. A man caught sight of the two women. “What are you doing, skulking there?”

“Girls!” said another voice. “Look at them, all alone. I could have a girl, after watching that…”

“You can die at their hands or you can come with me now,” the Bear said to Vasya. “It is all one to me; I will not ask again.”

One of Vasya’s eyes was swollen shut, the other blurred; perhaps that had made her slow to pick out a fourth person, watching from the shadows. This person had skin that was violet-black, and her hair was pale, blowing white across eyes like two stars. She was looking from the women to the Bear and said not a word.

This was the demon called Midnight.

“I do not understand,” Vasya whispered. She stood frozen between Varvara, who had kept secrets, and the Bear, who offered poisonous safety.

Beyond them, silent, stood Lady Midnight. At the demon’s back, the woods seemed to have changed. They grew thicker, wilder, darker.

Varvara said, low and fierce in Vasya’s ear, “What do you see?”

“The Bear,” Vasya breathed. “And the demon called Midnight. And—a darkness. There is darkness behind her, such darkness.” She was shaking from head to foot.

“Run into the dark,” Varvara whispered to Vasya. “That was the message I had, and the promise. Touch the oak-sapling and run into the dark. That is the road, from here to the oak-tree by the lake. The road through Midnight opens every night to those with eyes to see. There will be refuge for you by the lake. Hold it in your mind; a stretch of water, shining, with a great oak that grows at the bow-curve of its shore. Run into the dark, and be brave.”

Whom to trust? The voices of men were growing louder. Their crunching footsteps broke into a run. Her only choices were fire or darkness or the devil in between.

“Go—go!” shouted Varvara. She placed Vasya’s bloody palm on the bark and shoved. Vasya found herself stumbling forward. The darkness loomed up, and then the Bear’s hand closed about her arm, an instant before the night swallowed her. She was spun to face him, her numb feet clumsy and scraping on the snow. “Go into the darkness,” he breathed. “And you will die.”

She had no words, no courage, no defiance left. She made no answer at all. The only thing that drove her to gather all her strength and wrench away from him, fling herself into the night, was the desire to get away, from him, from the noise, from the smell of fire.

She broke his grip and hurled herself into the dark. Instantly, the lights and the noise of Moscow were swallowed up. She was in a forest all alone, beneath an unsullied sky. She took one step forward, and then another. And then she tripped, fell to her knees, and could not muster the strength to rise. The last thing she heard was a half-familiar voice. “Dead just like that? Well, perhaps the old woman was wrong.”

Behind her, somewhere, it seemed the Bear was laughing again.

And then Vasya lay still, unconscious.

IN THE TRUE WORLD, the Bear’s breath hissed between his teeth, still with that edge of angry laughter. He said to Varvara, “Well, you have killed her. I didn’t even need to break my word to my brother. I thank you for that.”

Varvara said nothing. The Eater’s greatest power is his knowledge of the desires and weaknesses of men. Varvara’s mother had taught her much of the ways of chyerti. Varvara had tried to forget what she knew. What did it matter? She had not the eyes to see them, as her sister liked to remind her.

But now the Eater was free, and her mother and her sister were gone.

Two young men came stumbling up, drunk. In their eyes was a hungry light. “Well, you’re old and you’re ugly,” said one. “But you’ll serve.”

Without a word, Varvara kicked the first man between the legs, put a hard shoulder into the second. They fell yelping to the snow. She heard the Bear’s sigh of satisfaction. Above all, her mother had said, he is a lover of armies, of battles, and of violence.

Holding her skirts, Varvara ran, back to the lights, the chaos of the posad and thence up the hill of the kremlin. As she ran, she heard the Bear’s voice in her ears, though he had made no move to follow her. “I must thank you again, No-Eyes, that the little witch is dead, and my promise is unbroken.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Varvara whispered between clenched teeth. “Not yet.”