The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

Another crack of thunder sounded. “My brother is done with subtleties,” said Morozko.

“Come on,” said Vasya.

They burst out of the palace, onto a landing, and looked down at a landscape transformed. It was raining, hard and steadily, lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. The dooryard was swimming in mud already, but in the center was a knot of men, strangely still.

Guards, Vasya saw, squinting through the rain. Olga’s guards, and Dmitrii’s, standing bewildered.

The knot of them broke apart. Vasya glimpsed Konstantin Nikonovich, his golden head rain-wet in the middle of the dooryard.

He was holding her sister Olga by the arm.

He had a knife to the princess’s throat.

His beautiful voice was shouting Vasya’s name.

The guards, Vasya could see, were torn between fear for the princess and bewildered submission to the holy madman. They stood still; if any remonstrated with Konstantin it was lost in the noise of falling water. If a guard moved nearer, Konstantin backed up, holding the knife right against Olga’s throat.

“Come out!” he roared. “Witch! Come out or I’ll kill her.”

Vasya’s first, overwhelming instinct was to sprint down to her sister, but she forced herself to pause and think. Would revealing herself win Olga any respite? Perhaps, if Olga disavowed her. Yet Vasya hesitated. The Bear was standing behind the priest. But Medved wasn’t really watching Konstantin. His gaze was turned out into the rain-soaked darkness. “Calling the dead,” said Morozko, his eyes on his brother. “You must get your sister out of the dooryard.”

That settled it. “Come with me,” she said, gathered her courage and stepped bareheaded out into the rain. The guards might not have recognized her in the stormy dusk: a girl who was supposed to be dead. But Konstantin’s eyes locked on her the instant she stepped into the dooryard and he fell utterly silent, watching her come toward him.

First one guard’s head turned, then another. She heard their voices: “Is that—?”

“No, it can’t be.”

“It is. The holy father knew.”

“A ghost?”

“A woman.”

“A witch.”

Now their drawn weapons were turning toward her. But she ignored them. The Bear, the priest, her sister—those were the only things she could see.

Such a current of rage and bitter memory ran between her and Konstantin that even the guards must have felt it, for they made a path for her. But they closed ranks again at her back, swords in their hands.

Stark in Vasya’s mind was the last time she’d faced Konstantin Nikonovich. Her horse’s blood lay between them, and her own life.

Now it was Olga who was caught up in their hatred; Vasya thought of a cage of fire, and she was deathly afraid.

But her voice didn’t shake.

“I am here,” said Vasya. “Let my sister go.”

* * *

KONSTANTIN DIDN’T SPEAK IMMEDIATELY. The Bear did. Was it her imagination or did his face show an instant of unease? “Still in your right mind?” the Bear said to Vasya. “A pity. Well met again, brother,” he added to Morozko. “What magic pulled you from my grip before—?” He broke off, looking between Vasya and the winter-king.

“Ah,” he said, softly. “Stronger than I would have guessed: her power and your bond both. Well it is no matter. Hoping to be beaten again?”

Morozko made no answer at all. His eyes were on the gate as though he could see beyond the bronze-studded wood. “Hurry, Vasya,” he said.

“You can’t stop it,” said Medved.

Konstantin flinched at the sound of the Bear’s voice. His knife was fraying the cloth of the veil about Olga’s face. As though she were speaking to a frightened horse, Vasya said to Konstantin, “What do you want, Batyushka?”

Konstantin didn’t answer; she could see he didn’t really know. All his prayers had earned him only silence from God. Yielding up his soul to the Bear had won him neither that creature’s honesty nor his loyalty. In the stinging grip of his own self-hatred, he wanted to hurt her by any means, and had not thought beyond.

His hands shook. Only Olga’s headdress and veil were keeping her from being cut by accident. The Bear cast a benign eye over the scene, drinking up the raw emotion of it, but most of his attention was still on the world outside Dmitrii’s walls.

Olga was white to the lips but dignified still. Her eyes met Vasya’s without a tremor. With trust.

Vasya said to Konstantin, showing him her open palms, “I will yield myself up to you, Batyushka. But you must let my sister go up into the terem, let her go back to the women.”

“Trick me, witch?” Konstantin’s voice had lost none of its beauty, but the control was gone; it boomed and cracked. “You yielded to the fire too; but it was all a trick. Am I to be taken in again? You and your devils. Bind her hands,” he added to the guard. “Bind her hands and feet. I will keep her in a chapel where devils cannot get in uninvited, and she cannot trick me again.”

The guards stirred uneasily, but none of them made a decisive movement forward.

“Now!” screamed Konstantin, stamping his foot. “Lest her devils come for us all!” His glance went with horror from Morozko at Vasya’s shoulder, to the Bear at his own side, to the house-chyerti gathered in the yard, watching—

Not watching the drama in the dooryard. Watching the gate. Despite the rain, Vasya caught a whiff of rot. A little curl of triumph was playing about the Bear’s lips. There was no time. She must get Olya away…

A new voice fell into the tense silence. “Holy Father, what is this?”

Dmitrii Ivanovich strode into the dooryard. Attendants scurried, disregarded, at his back; his long yellow hair was dark with water, curling up under his cap. The guards parted to let the Grand Prince through. He halted in the center of the ring, looked directly at Vasya. In his face was wonder. But not, Vasya noted, surprise. She met Dmitrii’s eyes with sudden hope.

“See?” snapped Konstantin, not slacking his grip on Olga. He had regained some control of his voice; the word snapped out like a fist. “There is the witch that set fire to Moscow. She was, we thought, justly punished. But through black magic, here she stands.” This time the guards growled agreement. A dozen blades were pointed at Vasya’s breast.

“Hold them a few moments longer,” said the Bear to Konstantin. “And we will have victory.”

A spasm of rage crossed Konstantin’s face.