The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(44)

“We can,” she insisted. “I see you. You will not fade.”

“You are not enough.” The black lips had pulled back again, revealing the needles of his teeth. “And the Bear is stronger than you.”

    “The Bear is not here,” said Vasya. “I am here and you will not kill these men. Quiet the water!”

The vodianoy only hissed, mouth opening wide. Vasya did not recoil, but reached out a scraped hand and touched his warty face. She said, “Listen to me and be at peace, river-king.” The vodianoy felt like living water, cold and silken and alive under her hand. She committed the texture of his skin to memory.

He shrank away. His mouth closed. “Must it be so?” he asked her, in a different voice. He sounded suddenly afraid. But beneath it was a thread of agonized hope. Vasya thought of what her great-grandmother had said, that the chyerti didn’t really wish to fight, at all.

Vasya took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “It must.”

“Then I will remember,” said the vodianoy. The raging force of the current slacked. Vasya drew a relieved breath. “You must also remember—sea-maiden.” The vodianoy sank gurgling beneath the water and vanished before she could ask him why he called her that.

The level of the river began to drop. By the time Vasya dragged herself ashore, it was only muddy creek again.

The man that she had rescued was standing on the bank when she came wading out. She was bedraggled, panting and shivering, but at least she wasn’t sleepy. She jerked to a halt when she saw him waiting, quelled a startled impulse to flee.

He raised his hands. “Do not be afraid, boy. You saved my life.”

Vasya didn’t speak. She didn’t trust him. But the water was at her back, the night, the forest, the Midnight-road. All promised refuge. She was afraid of the man with an instinctive fear, but it wasn’t like Moscow, where walls hemmed her in. So she stood fast and said, “If you are grateful, Gospodin, then tell me your name and your purpose here.”

He stared. Vasya realized belatedly that he had thought she was a peasant boy but that she didn’t sound like one.

“I suppose it is of no matter now,” he said after a grim silence. “I am called Vladimir Andreevich, the Prince of Serpukhov. I, with my men, was to take a tribute of silver to Sarai, to the puppet-khan and his temnik Mamai. For Mamai has mustered an army and will not disperse it until he has his tax. But now the silver is gone.”

    Her brother-in-law, sent by Dmitrii on an errand meant to avert a war, now thwarted. Vasya understood why affinity had brought her here; knew also why the Bear had wanted to drown the silver. Why bring down Dmitrii himself when he could get Tatars to do it?

Perhaps the silver could be found. But not in darkness. Could she force the vodianoy to retrieve it? She hesitated between the forest and the water.

Vladimir was considering her, narrow-eyed. “Who are you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she assured him with perfect honesty.

His sharp gray eyes took in the fading cuts and bruises on her face. “I mean you no harm,” he said. “Wherever you ran away from—I won’t send you back. Would you like something to eat?”

The unexpected kindness almost drove tears from her; she realized how bewildered and frightened she had been, and still was. But she had no time for tears.

“No,” she said. “I thank you.” She had decided. To end the Bear’s mischief once and for all, she needed the winter-king.

So she fled, a wraith in the darkness.





15.


    Farther, Stranger Countries




THE MOON WAS HANGING NEAR the horizon and it was still endless, sapping night. Vasya was barefoot, and now she was cold.

Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump, clutching Vasya’s basket. He looked outraged. “You are wet,” he said. “And you are lucky I kept you in sight. What if you and I and the horse had all gone into different midnights? You would have been lost.”

Vasya’s teeth were chattering. “I didn’t think of it,” she said to her little ally. “You are so wise.”

Ded Grib looked a little mollified.

“I am going to have to find somewhere to dry my clothes,” Vasya managed. “Where is Pozhar?”

“There,” said Ded Grib, pointing to a glimmer in the darkness. “I kept you both in sight.”

Vasya, in gratitude, bowed deeply and sincerely before him, and then she said, “Can you find a place where no one will see if I build a fire?”

Grumbling, he did. She laid a fire and then hesitated, looking at the wood, feeling the rage and terror—and flame—in her soul just waiting to be let out.

The sticks went up in a shower of sparks, almost before she thought of it, and reality at once yawed at her feet. The infinite darkness of this place already weighed on her; now it felt a hundred times worse.

    Her shaking hand crept to the lump in her clothes, where the domovaya had sewn the wooden nightingale. Her hand closed around it. It felt like an anchor.

A light gleamed through the thick trees. Pozhar came out of the dark, mincing in the bracken. She shook her mane. Stop making magic, foolish girl. You will be as mad as the old woman. It is easier than you’d think, to lose yourself in Midnight. Her ears flicked. If you go mad, I am leaving you here.