The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

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?”