Prince Ivan (25 page)

Ivan looked at the swords, and saw his death in the instant he picked them up.

He looked at Koshchey the Undying, and saw his death in the instant the necromancer chose.

He looked at Mar’ya Morevna, and saw her memory of him was the only future he had left.

The iron collar round his neck was no more now than surplus weight, the swords lying criss-cross at his feet no more than a symbol he could carry as he died, so that any who might speak of him in times to come could say that Tsarevich Ivan had fallen sword in hand. He had read that phrase often enough in the old tales, and he’d thought it little comfort to the ones who fell. How very small that comfort truly was, he hadn’t known till now.

On those few, few times when he had stood beside his father on the kremlin ramparts, looking down to witness some judgment or other, Ivan had wondered how those condemned to die could go to it with such ease of mind. He knew now. When nothing else remained, no hope of reprieve and no final chance of escape, then dignity became the final refuge and death itself was surely such an adventure that no one of courage would watch its approach except with boldness.

Give
thanks
to
the
good
God
, said the old story,
that
in
His
wisdom
he
set
death
at
the
end
of
life
,
and
not
at
the
beginning
…

Ivan stooped as swiftly as he had ever moved, closing his hand on the hilt of his sabre, and as he came up again he swung its razor edge at the centre of the grin half-hidden in the midst of Koshchey’s beard. He felt the grooved wood of the sabre’s grip against his closing fingers, and he felt the weight of its blade tug forward as the weapon left the ground.

And then he heard Mar’ya Morevna scream, no sound his brave, beloved wife should make, and he heard a shrill hissing as something heavy moved swiftly through the air, and he heard a ringing sound like cold iron cut through by steel, and he heard…

…nothing more.

*

Koshchey the Undying waved his hands in the air and blew on his fingers to relieve their sting. His huge curved sword was sunk for half its length into the ground, still thrumming from buried point to blurring pommel with the force of its cut, one that had sliced through an unsuspected iron collar and the neck it was meant to guard.

“Almost, little Prince,” said Koshchey. “You were very, very close. But not quite close enough.”

Ivan Aleksandrovich lay in two pieces at his feet, head parted from shoulders by that sharp-edged sword. There was very little blood. Some had soaked into the fabric of a crimson coat trimmed with sable, and some more had beaded among the strands of the dead man’s pale-blond hair. The rest had drained into the yielding earth, leaving no more than a trace of steam on the cool evening air.

Tsarevich Ivan stared up through the bitter-scented steam. His eyes and mouth were open and his expression was surprised, as if he had put more trust in the collar at his neck than it deserved, for it had been sheared clean through from back to front and side to side. Even halfway would have been enough.

Koshchey looked down at the head and body, separated by the blade of that long, sharp sword, and by a yard of dark, wet earth, and by all the gulf between the living and the dead. Then he looked up at Mar’ya Morevna and smiled a cruel smile.

She was still sitting astride the ordinary grey horse that had given him so much trouble, and there was a mace in her hand. The horse was sidling and stamping at the heavy smell of blood, and Mar’ya Morevna had let the mace hang slack and useless. Instead she chewed at the knuckles of the fist thrust into her mouth, shocked by the sight of a dead husband as if there had never before been widows in Russia. The good God knew there had been many and more than enough each time the Tatars came from the east and the Teutons came from the west, and there would doubtless be many more again.

Koshchey
Bessmertny
stared at both horse and rider for a short while, then wrenched his great cleaver of a sword out of the blood-warmed earth. He wiped it between his fingers, flicked the spatters aside and thrust it back into its man-skin scabbard.

“Mar’ya Morevna,” he said, paying no heed to the silent tears that ran slowly down her cheeks, “you know where my kremlin is. Go to it, go to the chambers set aside for you, and stay there.”

Mar’ya Morevna didn’t move. “And if I don’t?” she said, “will you cut my head off too?”

“Cut off the head of the fairest Princess in all the Russias?” said Koshchey the Undying, grinning with all his teeth. “No, I will not. That would be a waste, Mar’ya Morevna, and besides, if I cut off your head, you would forget how much I grow displeased with thieves.”

“So why send me away,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “knowing you could catch me any time you please?”

He shrugged. “I would have sent you away, foolish woman, so you might not witness the full extent of my displeasure. But since you choose to remain, then watching what I do is not my choice, but yours.”

Koshchey took an axe from the saddle strapped to his black and bloody horse, and then drew his sword once more out of its sheath made of the skins of men. Holding one weapon in each hand, he raised them before Mar’ya Morevna’s eyes and said, “This is your final chance. Either you leave now, or you stay until I am done.”

Mar’ya Morevna looked at the axe, and at the sword, knowing what he intended, and bowed her head. “Do as you wish, Koshchey,” she said. “But no matter what you do, know this: for all the days of your long life, you’ll be compared to the memory of my beloved husband and always be found wanting.” Then she straightened her back, and stared straight before her, and her eyes saw only the Ivan of her memory, smiling and bold, laughing and merry, courageous and stern.

But Koshchey the Undying took both axe and sword and worked for half an hour, until he was in perspiration with his labour, and all that remained of Tsarevich Ivan Aleksandrovich Khorlovskiy was a heap of scattered fragments that glistened in the light of the newly-risen moon. He took a barrel from his saddle, such as holds small-beer for riders who grow thirsty, and drank it dry. Then he opened it and stuffed the bloody shreds and bones inside, without even such prayers as dead Prince Ivan had spoken in his kindness over Koshchey’s corpse. After that, with no more shriving than a spit and curse, he flung the barrel into a nearby river leading over many miles to the bitter Sea of Azov, and dragged Mar’ya Morevna weeping back to his dark kremlin.

*

It had been close on a quarter-year since Ivan’s sisters had heard any news of their brother, apart from an occasional dull letter to remind them of what they knew already: except when trying to divert the attention of Anastasya Solov’ev, Prince Ivan had little talent for writing. The sorcerers Fenist and Vasiliy and Mikhail made many comforting excuses concerning that long silence. Chief among them was – with a smile – that since Ivan had recently married the fairest Princess in all the Russias, he had much more to do than write letters.

It was a reasoning which Yekaterina and Yelizaveta and Yelena laughed to the proper degree of scorn, and then several degrees beyond.
They
, they pointed out, once or twice with the cold kremlin moats as an emphasis, had remained in contact with their parents the Tsar and Tsaritsa of Khorlov, and why should their brother the Tsarevich be any different? They said so with sufficient frequency that at last their husbands went to certain well-locked drawers and cabinets, the better to assure their wives…

And there found the things left by Ivan as keepsakes which they, being wise, hadn’t mentioned. They didn’t mention them now.

In that part of the wide white world where the heretics lived and spoke Latin rather than good Church Slavonic, the things would have been called
memento
mori
, memories of death. A reminder of what comes to all, in God’s good time. In Holy Mother Russia they were warnings instead of memories. After being asked and perhaps a little persuaded, Ivan had left a knife, a fork and a spoon, all from the pouch at his belt, all of them silver and all as personal as his own fingers.

Mikhail Voronov the Raven, Prince of the Dark Forests, looked at the spoon left him by Tsarevich Ivan. It had been bright when it was given, polished enough to challenge the stars and the waning moon in the night sky overhead.

Now it was tarnished black, and stank like something dead.

Prince Mikhail sat for many hours that night, leafing through his books of lore in hope of learning what misfortune had befallen Ivan. They told him nothing more than what was already far too plain. It became somewhat more than nothing when thunder from a clear sky rang out over Prince Mikhail’s kremlin, and suddenly his brother Vasiliy was sitting in a chair at the far side of the book-heaped table. Perhaps it was typical of Prince Vasiliy, and perhaps it was typical only of his youth, but the Eagle’s feet were already crossed at the ankles and propped up on the table.

“These books,” said Mikhail the Raven reprovingly, rescuing them from beneath the heels of Vasiliy’s boots, “are far older than you.”

“And probably more boring,” said Vasiliy the Eagle. He folded his arms with a movement that suggested a small, slight fluttering of wings, and glanced without much interest at the leather-bound volumes stacked across the wide library desk. Then he held up a blackened fork that had once been polished silver. “Brother Ivan is in trouble,” he said.

“Brother Ivan is
dead
,” said Mikhail. “And Koshchey the Undying is loose upon the wide white world once more.”

Prince Vasiliy Orlov raised his fur-brimmed hat a little and signed himself with the cross. “Poor young fool,” he said, even though Ivan had been no more than four years his junior. “I didn’t know things had come to that. Though from the way you say it, I can guess at something else. He was the one who loosed Koshchey.”

“Vanya was never one for remembering what he was told.” Mikhail opened one of his books of magic and thumbed through it. “But bad memory isn’t punished by death in any realm I know. So I intend, with your and Fenik’s help, to set matters to rights.”

“And just where is our sharp-eyed brother on this fine, clear night?”

“Using those sharp eyes of his, at my request.”

“Looking for…?”

“Ivan.” Mikhail Voronov’s dark eyes glittered in the golden lamplight; it was impossible to read what thoughts swam in their depths, but his voice was edged with faint disgust. “Or whatever Koshchey has left of him.”

Vasiliy flinched at the implication in those simple words. “That’s enough and more than enough, Misha!” he said hurriedly. “I don’t want to hear anything more about it!”

“All right,” said the Raven, smiling at how one so burly and strong could also be so squeamish. “But once Fenik has found Vanya’s body, you may have to carry him. You’re by far the strongest of the three of us – except, perhaps, for your stomach…”

“Very funny, dear brother Misha. Very funny indeed. Can you see how much it doesn’t make me laugh?” Prince Vasiliy looked at one particular book amongst the many littering the table-top, and raised his eyebrows slightly as he tapped its covers with a cautious finger. “And what about the words in here?” he said dubiously. “Is reading them to be your part in all this?”

Mikhail glanced at the book and nodded. “It’ll be the best and only part that I can play,” he said. “And as you well know, that part is one that
only
I can play. Though I confess I relish it as little as you do.”

“I expected as much. Before God, Misha, necromancy’s a chancy business.”

“I know that well enough. I do this for our brother Ivan’s sake, and for our wives, his sisters. But I’ve no wish to make a habit of it. Some habits are hard to break.”

“If the old stories tell it truly, that was how Koshchey began as well. Trying to do good, perhaps.”

“Perhaps. I can’t see what good can be done if you forfeit your soul in the process.”

“And what do we do now?”

Prince Mikhail Voronov stared hard at the book of necromancy, and at spells that told how even death could be turned back on itself and set at nothing. Despite his skill at bright magic, he shuddered slightly at the thought of such dark sorcery and signed himself with the life-giving cross.

“Now we wait to hear from Fenik.”

*

It was not a long time, nor was it a short time, before the ceiling of the kremlin split apart and Prince Fenist the Falcon stood before them. There was weariness in his face, and sea-salt in his hair, but his bright eyes were as keen as ever. He reached into his belt, pulled out a silver eating-knife that now was black, and laid it on the desk among the books of magic.

“I flew many leagues over land and over sea,” he said, “and I think I’ve found what we seek.” Then he sat down and drank wine as if washing a foul taste from his mouth.

The other Princes waited until their brother set his cup aside and was prepared to speak again, then Vasiliy the Eagle leaned forward and asked, “What did you find?”