The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(65)

Morozko had let the white mare go, to graze beside the river and keep out of the sight of men. He was staying out of sight himself: little more than a cool breeze ruffling the leaves.

The sun rose higher and higher over the swooning world. Gray shadows lay like bars of iron along the trail. To their left ran the river. To their right was a vast wheat-field, red-gold as Pozhar’s coat, hissing as a hot wind flattened the stalks. The sun was like a mallet between the eyes. The path coated their feet with dust.

On and on they walked, still passing the wheat. It seemed endless. It seemed…Suddenly Vasya halted, shading her eyes with a hand, and said, “How large is this field?”

The men stopped when she did; now they looked at each other. No one could tell. The hot day seemed interminable. Morozko was nowhere to be seen. Vasya peered out over the wheat-field. A whirlwind of dust spun through the red-gold grass; the sky was dull with yellow haze, the sun overhead—still overhead…How long had it been overhead?

Now that they’d stopped, Vasya saw that the monks were all flushed and breathing fast. Faster than before? Too fast? It was so hot. “What is it?” asked Sasha, wiping the sweat from his face.

Vasya pointed to the whirlwind. “I think—”

Suddenly, with a muffled gasp, Sergei slumped over his horse’s mane and toppled sideways. Sasha caught him; Sergei’s placid horse didn’t move, only tilted a puzzled ear. Sergei’s skin was scarlet; he’d stopped sweating.

    Behind the monks, Vasya glimpsed a woman with fair skin and hair bleached white, raising a pair of cutting shears in one bone-colored hand.

Not a woman. Without thinking, Vasya leaped, caught the chyert’s wrist, forced it backward.

“I have met Lady Midnight,” said Vasya to her, not letting go. “But not her sister Poludnitsa, whose touch, they say, strikes men with heat-sickness.”

Sasha was kneeling in the dust now, holding Sergei and looking stricken. Rodion had run for water. Vasya wasn’t sure he’d find any. The wheat-field at noon was the realm of Midday, and they had stumbled into it.

“Let me go!” hissed Poludnitsa.

Vasya did not slack her grip. “Let us go,” she said. “We have no quarrel with you.”

“No quarrel?” The chyert’s white hair snapped like straw in the sultry wind. “Their bells will be the end of us. That is quarrel enough, don’t you think?”

“The bell-makers wish only to live,” said Vasya. “As we all do.”

“If they can only live by killing,” snapped Lady Midday. “Better they all die.” Rodion came back without water; Sasha had risen to his feet, a hand on the searing hilt of his sword, but he couldn’t see who Vasya was talking to.

Vasya said to Midday, “Their deaths are yours; men and chyerti are bound together for good or ill. But it can be for good. We can share this world.” To show her good intentions, Vasya reached out and bloodied her thumb on the shears. Behind her, she heard the monks gasp, and realized that the touch of her blood had allowed them to see the demon.

Midday laughed, shrill. “Are you going to save us, little mortal child? When the Bear has promised us war, and victory?”

“The Bear is a liar,” said Vasya.

Just then Sergei’s thready voice whispered behind her, “Fear and flee, unclean and accursed spirit, visible through deceit, hidden by pretense. Whether you be of the morning, noonday, midnight, or night, I expel you.”

    Midday cried out, this time in real pain; she dropped her shears, fell back, vanishing, vanishing…

“No!” Vasya cried to the monks. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what they think.” She lunged and seized Midday’s wrist, keeping her from disappearing utterly.

“I see you,” she said to her, low. “Live on.”

Midday stood an instant, wounded, afraid, wondering. Then she was swept up in a whirlwind and vanished.

Morozko stepped out of the noonday glare. “Didn’t your nurse warn you about wheat-fields in summer?” he asked.

“Father!” Sasha cried, just as Vasya turned back to the monks. Sergei was breathing too fast; his pulse vibrated in his throat. Morozko might have hesitated, but, muttering something, he knelt in the dust, laid long fingers against the frantic pulse in the monk’s neck. As he did, he breathed out, his other fist clenched hard.

“What are you doing?” Sasha demanded.

“Wait,” said Vasya.

The wind rose. Sluggishly at first, then faster, flattening the wheat. It was a cold wind: a wind of winter, pine-smelling, impossible in all the heat and the dust.

Morozko’s jaw was set; his outline grew fainter even as the wind grew stronger. In a moment he would disappear, his presence as unimaginable as a snowflake at high summer. Vasya caught him by the shoulders. “Not yet,” she said into his ear.

He shot her a brief look and hung on.

As the air cooled, Sergei’s breathing and rabbit-fast pulse began to slow. Sasha and Rodion looked better too. Vasya was drinking in the cold air with great gulps. But Morozko’s outline was wavering badly now, despite her grip.

Unexpectedly, Sasha asked, “What can I do?” Hope had won out over the censure on his face.

She glanced at him in surprise, and said, “See him. And remember.” Morozko’s lips thinned, but he said nothing.