The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

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

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

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

The beast saw him.

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

This devil never stopped talking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Konstantin did not know whether to be relieved or terrified.

“But,” murmured the Bear, “the cathedral.”

* * *

DMITRII DIDN’T AGREE. “Divine service for all Moscow?” he asked. “Father, be reasonable. Folk will faint from the heat, or perhaps be trampled. Feelings are running high enough already without calling everyone together to sweat and pray and kiss icons, pleasing as it may be to God.” This last was tacked on as an afterthought.

The Bear, watching invisibly, said with satisfaction, “I do love sensible men. They always try to make sense of the impossible and they can’t. Then they blunder. Come now, little father. Blind him with eloquence.”

Konstantin gave no sign he heard, beyond a tightening of his mouth. But aloud he said, reproof in his tone, “It is God’s will, Dmitrii Ivanovich. If there is any chance to lift this curse from Moscow we must take it. The dead are infecting Moscow with fear, and what if I am called too late? What if worse comes than upyry, and my prayers do not stop it? No, I think it better that the whole city pray together, and perhaps make an end of this curse.”

Dmitrii was frowning still, but he agreed.

* * *

TO KONSTANTIN, THE WORLD seemed less real when he donned his new robes of white and scarlet, his collar high and stiffened in the back. Sweat ran like rivers down his spine as he put a hand to the door of the sanctuary.

The Bear said, “I wish to go in.”

“Then go in,” said Konstantin, his mind elsewhere.

The devil made a sound of impatience and took Konstantin’s hand. “You must bring me with you.”

Konstantin’s hand curled in the demon’s. “Why can’t you go in yourself?”

“I am a devil,” said the Bear. “But I am also your ally, man of God.”

Konstantin drew the Bear into the sanctuary with him, and gave the icons a spiteful look. See what I do, when you will not speak to me? The Bear looked about him curiously: at the gilding, and jeweled icon-covers, at the scarlet and blue of the ceiling.

At the people.

For the cathedral was packed with people, a shoving, swaying throng, smelling of sour sweat. Crammed together before the icon-screen, they wept and they prayed, watched over by the saints and also by a silent devil with one eye.

For the Bear walked out with the clergy, when the doors of the iconostasis were thrown open. Surveying the crowd, he said, “This bodes well. Come now, man of God. Show me your quality.”

When he began the service, Konstantin did not know whom he chanted for: the watching throng or the listening demon. But he flung all the torment of his tattered soul into it, until the whole cathedral wept.

Afterward, Konstantin went back to his cell in the monastery, kept against the furnishing of his own house, and lay down, wordless, in his sweat-soaked linen. His eyes were shut, and the Bear did not speak, but he was there. Konstantin could feel the dazzling, sulfurous presence.