The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(79)

Morozko breathed out a single, shattered breath.

Vasya saw the Bear’s face contorted with rage. He had underestimated men’s faith, and just like that, his army was gone. But Medved himself was still unbound, still free. Now he would flee, into the night, into the storm.

“Morozko,” she said. “Quickly—”

But the lightning flashed again, showed them Konstantin, his golden hair rain-dark, standing before the hulking shadow of the Bear. A gust brought the priest’s carrying voice clearly to her ears. “You lied about that too, then,” said Konstantin, his voice small but clear. “You said there was no God. But the holy father prayed and—”

    “There isn’t a God,” Vasya heard the Bear say. “There is only faith.”

“What is the difference?”

“I don’t know. Come, we must go.”

“Devil, you lied. You lied again.” A break in that flawless voice, a croak like an old man coughing. “God was there—there all the time.”

“Perhaps,” said the Bear. “And perhaps not. The truth is that no one knows, man or devil. Come with me now. They will kill you if you stay.”

Konstantin’s eyes were steady on the Bear’s. “No,” he said. “They won’t.” He raised a blade. “Go back to wherever you crept from,” he said. “I have one power. The devils told me this too, and once I was also a man of God.”

The Bear’s clawed hand shot out. But the priest was faster. Konstantin drew the knife swiftly across his own throat.

The Bear caught the knife, wrenched it away. Too late. Neither one made a sound. The lightning flashed again. Vasya saw the Bear’s face, saw him catch Konstantin as he fell, put hands—human hands now—to the blood pouring through the split skin of the priest’s throat.

Vasya stepped forward and whipped the rope round the Bear’s neck, drew it tight.

He didn’t dodge this time. He couldn’t, caught already by the priest’s sacrifice. Instead he just shuddered, head bowed beneath the rope’s power.

Vasya wrapped the other golden thing about his wrists. He didn’t move.

She should have felt triumph then.

It was over, and they had won.

But when the Bear lifted his eyes to hers, there was no longer any rage in his face. Instead his eyes looked beyond her, found his twin. “Please,” he said.

Please? Please have mercy? Set me free once more? Somehow, Vasya didn’t think so. She didn’t understand.

The Bear’s eyes went again to the priest dying in the mud; he barely seemed to notice the golden rope.

    Triumph in Morozko’s voice, and a strange note, like unwilling understanding. “You know I won’t.”

The Bear’s mouth twisted. It wasn’t a smile. “I know you won’t,” he said. “I had to try.”

The gold and blue head was dark with rain, pale with death. Konstantin’s hand rose, streaming blood in the darkness. The Bear said, “Let me touch him, damn you,” to Vasya, and she stepped back bewildered, allowing the Bear to kneel and catch the priest’s wavering hand. He closed his own thick fingers tight around it, ignoring the bound wrists. “You are a fool, man of God,” he said. “You never understood.”

Konstantin said, in a blood-filled whisper, “I never understood what?”

“That I do keep faith, in my own fashion,” said the Bear. A twist of his lips. “I did love your hands.”

The artist’s hand, with its expressive fingers and cruel, tapering nails, was limp as a dead bird in the chyert’s grip. In Konstantin’s eyes, already milky, fixed on the Bear, was an expression of puzzlement. “You are a devil,” he said again, gasping for air as the blood left his body. “I don’t—aren’t you vanquished?”

“I am vanquished, man of God.”

Konstantin stared, but Vasya could not tell what he was looking at. Perhaps he was seeing the face above him: a creature he loved and reviled as he loved and reviled himself.

Perhaps he was only seeing a starlit wood, and a road that had no turning.

Perhaps there was peace for him, there at the end.

Perhaps there was only silence.

The Bear lowered Konstantin’s head to the mud, the hair golden no more, but dark with blood and water. Vasya realized she had her hand pressed to her mouth. The wicked were not supposed to mourn, or to regret, or to have seen their silent God at last, in the steadfastness of another’s faith.

Slowly, the Bear unclenched his hand from the priest’s, slowly he stood. The golden rope seemed to weigh him down, shining its sickly gleam. Still wrapped in golden cord, the Bear’s hands closed tightly about the winter-king’s. “Brother, lead the priest gently,” he said. “He is yours now, and not mine.” His eyes went back to the crumpled form in the mud.

    “Neither of ours, in the end,” said Morozko. Vasya found her hands moving to cross herself, almost without being aware of it.

Konstantin’s open eyes were full of rainwater, spilling over, sliding down his temples like tears. “Your victory,” the Bear said to Vasya and bowed, sweeping a gesture over the field of the dead. His voice was colder than she’d ever heard Morozko’s. “I wish you joy of it.”