The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy 3)

A small village stood on a little rise, beyond the cleared fields. It was indistinct against the stars, but Vasya knew its every fold and curve. Longing closed her throat. It was midnight, in the village where she’d been born. Somewhere near, in his own house, was her brother Alyosha, her sister Irina.

But she wasn’t there for them. One day, she might go back—bring Marya back to meet her people, to eat good bread sitting in warm summer grass. But now she could not look for comfort here. She was on another errand.

“Pozhar,” said Vasya. “Why did you come back?”

Ded Grib, said the mare. He’s been getting news from all the mushrooms in Rus’, as self-important as you could wish, telling everyone he is your greatest ally. Today he came to me saying you were in danger again and that I was a great lump for not helping. I went to find you only to silence him, but then I saw the fires you made. They were good fires. The mare sounded almost approving. Besides, you don’t weigh very much. You aren’t even uncomfortable.

“Thank you,” said Vasya. “Will you carry me farther?”

That depends, said the horse. Are we going to do anything interesting?

Vasya thought of Morozko, far away in the white silence of his winter world. There was a welcome for her there, she knew. But not help. She might pull him, a shadow, out once more from winter, but to what end? He could not fight off an army of Tatars as he was, and save her brother.

She could only think of one who might be able to.

She said grimly, “More interesting than you might wish.” Once more, she wondered if she was being fatally rash.

But then she thought of Midnight. What had she meant when she said, We hoped that you were different.

Vasya thought she knew.

At her touch, Pozhar wheeled and galloped back through the trees.

29.

Between Winter and Spring

THERE IS A CLEARING ON the border between winter and spring. Once Vasya would have said that the cusp of spring was a moment. But now she knew that it was also a place, at the edge of the lands of winter.

At the center of the clearing stood an oak-tree. Its trunk was vast as a peasant’s hut, its branches spread like the roof-beams of a house, like the bars of a prison.

At the foot of the tree, leaning on the trunk, knees drawn up to his chest, sat Medved. It was still midnight. The clearing was dark; the moon had sunk below the horizon. There was only Pozhar’s light, echoed by the gleam of gold that bound the Bear’s wrists and throat. Utter silence in the forest all around, but Vasya had the distinct impression of unseen eyes, watching.

Medved didn’t move when he saw them, except his mouth quirked in an expression very far from a smile. “Come to gloat?” he asked.

Vasya slid off the mare’s back. The demon’s nostrils flared, taking in her disheveled appearance, the cut on her temple, feet caked with mud. Pozhar backed uneasily, ears locked on the Bear, remembering perhaps the teeth of his upyry in her flank.

Vasya stepped forward.

His unscarred brow lifted. “Or are you come to seduce me?” he asked. “My brother not enough for you?”

She said nothing. He couldn’t draw back, pressed against the tree, but the single eye opened wider. He was tense, bound tight by the gold. “No?” he said, still mocking. “Then why?”

“Did you mourn the priest?” she asked.

The Bear tilted his head and surprised her by saying simply, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“He was mine. He was beautiful. He could create and destroy with a word. He put his soul in his singing, in his writing of icons. He is gone. Of course, I mourn.”

“You shattered him,” she said.

“Perhaps. Though I did not make the cracks.”

Perhaps it was a fitting epitaph for Father Konstantin, to be regretted by a chaos-spirit. The Bear was leaning his head against the bole of the tree, as though untroubled, but the single eye was fixed on her. “Devushka, you are not here to lament Konstantin Nikonovich. Then why?”

“My brother is a prisoner of the Tatar general Mamai. And my brother-in-law with him,” she said.

The Bear snorted. “Kind of you to tell me. I hope they both die screaming.”

She said, “I cannot free them alone. I tried, and I failed.”

The eye took in her disheveled appearance again. “Did you?” His smile was almost whimsical. “What does that have to do with me?”

Vasya’s hands were shaking. “I mean to save them,” she said. “And after must save Rus’ from invasion. I cannot do it alone. I joined the war between you and your twin, when I helped Morozko bind you. But now I want you to join my war. Medved, will you help me?”

She had shocked him. The gray eye widened. But his voice was still light. “Help you?”

“I will make you a bargain.”

“What makes you think I’ll keep it?”

“Because,” she said, “I don’t think you want to spend eternity under this tree.”

“Very well.” He leaned forward, as far as the gold would allow. The words were scarcely more than a breath against her ear. “What bargain, devushka?”

“I will undo this golden thing,” she said. She traced the line of the binding, throat to wrist to hand. The golden bridle wanted to hold on; it was a tool made to bend one creature to another’s will. It resisted her, but when she slipped a finger beneath and pulled it just a little away from his skin, it gave.

Medved shuddered.

She did not want to see hope in his eyes. She wanted him to be a monster.

But monsters were for children. He was powerful, in his own fashion, and for her brother’s sake, she needed him.

Thinking of that, she opened the skin of her thumb on her dagger. His hand reached out involuntarily, drawn to the virtue in her blood. She drew away before he could touch her.

“If I release you, then you will serve me as Midnight serves my great-grandmother,” said Vasya grimly. “You will fight my battles and connive at my victories; if I summon, you will answer. You will swear never to lie to me, but give true counsel. You will not betray me, but always keep faith. You will also swear never again to turn your plagues onto Rus’: no terror or fire or dead alive. Under those conditions, and those alone, will I free you.”

He laughed. “The effrontery,” he said. “Just because my brother abased himself for your ugly face? Tell me why I should be your dog?”

Vasya smiled. “Because the world is wide and very beautiful, and you are tired of this clearing. I saw how you looked at the stars the night by the lake. Because, as you have noticed, I am like a chaos-spirit myself, and where I go disorder goes too. You enjoy that sort of thing. Because the fight between you and your brother is over, for you are both joining my war. And—perhaps you will like serving me. It would be a battle of wits at least.”