Mistress of the Solstice (3 page)

Wolf was waiting outside the outer village fence,
lying in the long grass. His head lifted up as he saw Ivan, his muzzle
rising as high as Ivan’s waist. It had a rust-colored
patch of dry blood smeared into the fur around his nose.

“You surely took a long time, boy,”
he growled as Ivan approached. “And, you look too
pleased with yourself.”

“He told me how to find Gleb!”

Wolf rubbed a paw against his nose, melting the stain into the rusted
gray of his fur. It was hard to imagine that he was capable of human
speech. It was even harder to imagine that this large gray beast had
been alive long before Ivan’s home kingdom had risen
from a group of troubled villages and local tribes. Ancient history, as
far as Ivan was concerned. Yet, in the past year, he had come to terms
with these things.

“And?” Wolf prompted.

“And what?”

“Are you sure it’s the same
Gleb?”

Ivan hesitated. He’d been so glad to hear the name from
the villager that the possibility that it might belong to somebody else
had never crossed his mind.

“He said Gleb the Herb Man. It seemed likely at the
time. And, there is only one way to find out for sure.
He’s only twenty versts from here, in a village called
Zabolotnoye.”

Wolf nodded. “Assuming that old Gleb
had decided to move back to the Damned Kingdom in the first place, it
would be just like him to find some god-forsaken village for a home.
How did Gleb’s name come up? You didn’t
ask,
did
you?”

Ivan shook his head. “You told me not to. And, I
didn’t think they would know, anyhow. The man just
mentioned him.”

Wolf fixed him with a stare.
“‘Just mentioned him’,
eh?’”

Ivan nodded.

“People never ‘just
mention’ anything.”

“Perhaps,” Ivan suggested,
“they do if you give them a
chance.”

Wolf bared his teeth. “Perhaps
you’d do better to move your smart feet. Twenty
versts
is a long
way.”

The man who opened the door had thin white hair falling past his
shoulders and a long straight beard. He eyed his visitors calmly, like
a man not prone to surprise.

“Come in.” The
man’s gaze was directed past Ivan’s
shoulder.

With a shock, Ivan realized the man spoke to Wolf. The gray beast
silently brushed past Ivan and padded to a small floor mat spread near
the stove. After a moment, Ivan followed him inside.

The dark, warm room smelled of herbs. In the light of a thick flat
candle floating in a clay dish of water, Ivan could see bundle after
dry bundle hanging from the invisible beams of the dark ceiling and
tied onto clothes lines, tangled like spider webs, just above his head.
It took some effort to navigate through the thicket of dry stems. Their
thick, heady smells made his head swim.

The dry warmth of the stove beckoned after the damp chill outside.

“It has been a long time,” Gleb the
Herb Man said. He was still addressing the wolf, but then he turned to
look at Ivan. His dark eyes held quiet curiosity.

It struck Ivan as strange. As far as he could tell, there was nothing in
him that called for such curiosity—a young man with blue eyes and
straw-colored hair, wearing simple peasant garb. The villages in all
the kingdoms were full of men who fit this description. But in the
past year of traveling with Wolf, Ivan had gotten used to many odd
things. A thin old man who talked to Wolf with familiarity and eyed
Ivan as a curious beast was by no means the strangest of them.

“It was damn hard to find you, old
man,” Wolf growled. “I would have
given up on you if the boy here hadn’t dragged the
information out of an unsuspecting villager. Who would have thought
that you’d forsake your promise and settle back in the
Kingdom of the Damned?”

A spark flared in the old man’s eyes.
“The Kingdom of the Immortal, you mean. Or, as people
here like to say—”

“…The Undead,” Wolf finished.
“We know. Spare us the witty
talk.”

“So.” Gleb’s eyes
returned to Ivan. The intensity of his gaze was unnerving.
“You found yourself another
hero.”

“Yes.”

“A strange choice. Not what I would have
expected.”

“I think,” Wolf
said, “what you expected is what
everyone
expects.”

“Can’t you just give
up?”

“You know I can’t.”

“
I
did.” A strange mixture of feelings filled
Gleb’s voice. Restraint. Bitterness. Pain.

Wolf nodded. “It was a hard loss for me. But I found
myself another herb man. And, he brought this boy back from the dead.
Now, the three of us are in this together.”

“Yes,” Gleb said.
“The three of
you
. Yet, you came back
to me. What do you want?”

Wolf shifted to turn his back closer to the fire. The flickers coming
through the narrow slits in the stove door made his coat glow like
amber.

“Give the boy some food,” Wolf
said. “He’s always
hungry.”

Now that Wolf mentioned it, Ivan did become aware of
the emptiness in his stomach. His last meal had been with his hosts in
the previous village. A
twenty-
verst
walk
through Leshy’s woods was a great distance to cover in
one day.

Gleb chuckled. “You came all the way here for
food?”

Wolf growled. “A bloody waste of time, if you ask me.
But no. He wants information. He’s a talker, too much
so for his own good.”

“What do you want to know?” Gleb
asked, turning his full attention to Ivan.

“I want to see the Mistress.” Ivan
swallowed, unnerved by the man’s direct gaze.
“To talk to her.”

Gleb got up, reached into the top of the stove, and pulled out a bundle
wrapped in a cloth. He set it on a bench and carefully took the cloth
off. It was a warm cabbage pie.

“It is her father you need to see, …?”

“Ivan,” Wolf supplied.

Gleb’s eyes lit up with sudden interest.
“Ivan.” He broke off a piece of
the pie and gestured for Ivan to help himself.

The pie was still warm, with eggs mixed into the moist cabbage filling.
Ivan hadn’t eaten one like it since
he’d left home.

“Hasn’t Wolf told
you?” Gleb asked. “Her
father’s powers feed off virgins. Without those girls
he would wither like a corpse. It is their love that keeps him
whole.”

“Love?” It was the second time Ivan
had heard the word today. Mentioned in connection with a dark
sacrifice, it sounded offensive.

Gleb sighed. “Kupalo,” he said,
“is the god of the crops. Of fertility. You do know
that true fertility feeds on love, don’t you,
lad?”

Ivan felt his ears get hot. Luckily, the room was dark enough to conceal
his blush.

“Our Tzar
Kashchey,” Gleb continued, “has
found a way to tap into the power of Kupalo. It was even more ingenious
than finding a way to separate himself from his own death and hide it
in the tip of a Needle. One virgin a year—not too big a price for
having a powerful sorcerer protect your kingdom,
eh?”

“What Needle?” Ivan asked.

Gleb threw a glance at Wolf.

“Go on,” Wolf prompted.
“Tell him.”

“Why haven’t you told him yourself,
Wolf? Why look for me in the first place?”

“We could have gone on without
you,” Wolf answered. “But no one
knows more about the Solstice than you do.”

“What about your other herb man?”

“He left this kingdom—too long
ago. He already told the boy what he could.”

“I see.”

The pause seemed to last forever. The old
man’s slender fingers broke off pieces of the pie one
by one. He chewed slowly, his eyes staring unseeingly into the
distance. Finally he finished his share and leaned back against the wall.
He looked tired.

“I don’t see how telling him anything
would help,” he said to Wolf. “The
Mistress has no feelings. Talking to her wouldn’t do a
thing. As for Kashchey—how do you persuade a wolf to give up his
meat?”

There was a growl from the mat by the stove.

“Sorry,” Gleb said.
“It was a figure of speech.”

“I want to try,” Ivan insisted.
“It wouldn’t be right if I
didn’t try. Tell me how I might do it, old
father.”

The herb man chuckled. “Old—yes.
But your father I certainly am not.”

“You could help me. If you would.”

“Like I said, young man. You need to
see Kashchey, not his daughter. At least Kashchey will kill you
quickly. The girl—she’ll just make you fall in love
with her and send you on an impossible task. No one has ever carried
out one of her tasks and lived to tell the tale.”

Ivan leaned against the wall, staring at the shifting shadows by the
fire.

“I won’t fall in love with
her,” he said at length.

Gleb shrugged. “They all say that, boy.
You’re no different than the rest.”

Ivan held his gaze. “She’s his victim
too. She hasn’t been given any choice. And everything
she must do—it’s just so wrong. I thought—maybe
I’d convince her to help.”

In the silence that followed, Ivan watched Gleb’s
shoulders shake with silent laughter. He turned to Wolf, but the
beast’s face was impenetrable.

“This one is even worse than I thought,
Wolf,” the herb man said. “A
romantic. How could a bloody romantic possibly accomplish anything at
all?”

Wolf only growled on his mat by the fire, shifting to expose his other
side to the heat.

Ivan sat up straight. “I may be a
romantic, Gleb, but one thing is definitely true. I’m
the one who is here, now; the one committed to this quest.
I’m the one who found you, and you’ll
have to deal with
me
,
like it or not. The only way I can do things is my
way.”

Gleb’s smile faded as he studied Ivan intently.
“The hard way, you mean.”

“The right way. Or so I hope.”

Gleb shook his head. “You’re just like
the rest of them, chasing after a pretty face. Don’t
tell me that rumors of her beauty didn’t attract you.
Don’t tell me that you, like all the other young men,
don’t desire to—”

Ivan lifted his chin. “She is a young girl in
Kashchey’s power. He’s using her,
whether she knows it or not. This makes her fate even worse. The
virgins’ souls die quickly as he devours them, but hers
must perish slowly, year by year, with every sacrifice she must conduct
in his name.”

Gleb’s gaze wavered.
“She
has
no soul,
boy.”

Ivan held a pause. “I must try to reach her. I
wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.
Besides, going through her might give us some advantage over Kashchey.
I heard they’re very close.”

Gleb crossed his arms on his chest.
“We’re wasting time with idle talk,
boy. It’s impossible to see the Mistress. She lives in
a high tower in the Tzar’s castle. She only comes out
under heavy guard when necessary, for her Solstice duties. Or,
sometimes, she turns into a dove and flies around. But then, you could
never recognize her.”

“A dove?” Ivan stared.

Gleb sighed.
“Haven’t you ever heard of
shape-shifters?”

“She’s a
shape-shifter?”

“She can only take two forms. Human
and dove. And—heed this—when she’s in bird form,
she has the
feelings
of
a dove.”

“So?”

“Have you ever heard of birds being prone to
emotion?”

“The villagers call doves ‘birds of
love’,” Ivan said uncertainly.

“Only in
mockery.” Gleb shook his head.
“They look lovely, that’s all.
Don’t let yourself be fooled by
looks.”

“She must do something else,” Ivan
insisted. “Doesn’t she ever
have…fun?”

Gleb sighed and turned to Wolf.

“I don’t know why you brought him
here. The boy knows nothing. You could have at least found a warrior,
like the others. This one just wants to talk. And you, best of all,
should know that talking won’t help. It never
does.”

Wolf stirred, but it was Ivan who spoke.

“You speak true, old father. I’m no
warrior. Yet, I’m the one you have, now. I came to
you because Wolf believes I can learn from you. He believes with your
help I can succeed. Will you not help?”

There was a long pause.

“Why him?” Gleb asked.

Wolf growled. In the darkness of the room his eyes shone like two hot
coals. “Because he’s not like the
others. And the others have all failed.”

“But he—”

Wolf’s stare cut
Gleb’s words off like a knife. “I
know what you are risking. If we fail, if Kashchey learns you are
helping us, you won’t stand a chance. Yet, the Gleb I
used to know wouldn’t be afraid to help the right
cause. Perhaps you are not the man we sought, after all. Years have
turned you into a coward.”

The old man lifted his chin, the fire in his eyes more frightening than
the wolf’s.

“You know this is madness,” he
said. “Years have turned you blind, Wolf. And
yet—” He turned and gave Ivan a long look.
“You really believe this boy can
succeed?”