Prince Ivan (27 page)

“I still can’t believe it,” he said in a small voice, looking at the collar. He shook it, and its pieces rang together softly, balefully, a reminder of what had happened. “But this is proof enough. I was dead. Koshchey killed me.”

“And we brought you back to life so you could confound him.” Vasiliy the Eagle, recovered from his earlier queasiness of stomach, was growing quite pugnacious. “So you could do to him what he did to you.”

“Almost, Vasya,” said Fenist the Falcon, “but not quite.” He looked at his brothers with a mingling of amusement and concern. “We must
not
let Ivan go charging back into the dark kremlin without better protection than a restored life, or Koshchey will just take it away again. You know he can. You know he will.”

Vasiliy shrugged. “True,” he said. “You could have spared yourself much misery, Ivan Aleksandrovich, had you come to us for help in the first place.”

“My thought exactly,” said Fenist.

“There was no first place.” If Ivan’s voice was somewhat sharp, he thought it justified. “Because there was no time. Koshchey himself told me that once Mar’ya Morevna was his prisoner past the dark of the moon, she would be his prisoner for always. And he still holds her. Did you expect me to leave her there without doing
something
?”

The sorcerer brothers looked at one another, then back at Ivan, and each of them had the good grace to look embarrassed. Mikhail the Raven was drawing patterns in the sand with a piece of driftwood; meaningless patterns, but of such shapes that the eye either flinched from them at once, or followed and was trapped. Ivan’s gaze was one that flinched away, and met Mikhail’s calm stare instead.

“None of us said that, Ivan,” he said, “so you can put your honour and your pride away until you need it. And you can sit down and listen while we work out what to do. Last night the moon was just past full, so we’ve time enough to talk.”

The discussion lasted for almost an hour, passing from one Prince to another. Each had questions for Ivan, interrogating him closely on whichever point gave most weight to their own arguments. There was only one problem, and it seemed to Ivan that he’d been the only one to see it. Neither Fenist, nor Vasiliy, nor even Mikhail the Raven, had said anything about how Koshchey the Undying might be killed. Escaped, yes; avoided, yes; imprisoned again, yes – although with reservations about how it might be done.

But not how he could be done away with once and for all.

At first Ivan felt uneasy about the ease with which his mind accepted killing to resolve his problem, but when he brought the matter up, his brother Princes laughed at such scruples.

“Vanya, the old bastard cut off your head!” said Fenist Sokolov. “Doing the same to him is only right and proper.” He hesitated then produced a sort of helpless grin-and-shrug. “Of course first you have to find some way to do it so he won’t just get up again…”

“Well done, brother mine,” said Ivan, very dry and trying not to smile at the Falcon’s expression. “Thanks for reminding me of a small point I might have completely overlooked.” They all laughed at Fenist’s discomfiture, all except Prince Mikhail.

“I don’t see anything amusing about your ‘
small
point’, Vanya,” he said, stripping the length of driftwood down between his fingers until it was little more than a splayed brush of fibre. He shredded it still further until it came to pieces in his hands and fell to the sand of the beach, then raised his head and gazed into three pairs of worried eyes.

“Maybe I didn’t tell you, or maybe you just didn’t realize, but those two bottles of the Waters, enough to complete my task, were all I was allowed. Understand this: I can travel East of the Sun and West of the Moon again, but I may
not
go on Ivan’s behalf. One visit to the Well and to the Fountain is all that any sorcerer is permitted. If Ivan is killed again, he stays dead!” That pronouncement and the haunted look in Mikhail’s eyes were enough to still all laughter.

“Then what can we do?” Vasiliy closed his great hands into fists like hammers in his anger at being so helpless. “What can we do?”

“Though we can
do
no more, we can advise,” said Mikhail. “As we’ve already done in a small way, through this discussion.”

“It sounded more like an argument to me.” Vasiliy hadn’t been getting the best of the exchanged opinions.

Fenist the Falcon slapped his hand against the sand. “Discussion, argument, squabble, fight, it all means the same if something useful comes of it!” He glanced sidelong at Ivan, and then looked long and hard at Mikhail. “So tell us, Misha – what
did
come of it?”

“Less than I hoped,” said Mikhail. “But enough. And the most important thing of all is, if Ivan can find a horse as good as Koshchey’s he can elude pursuit.”

“Is that all?” Prince Vasiliy the Eagle shook his head. “If we can do no more for Ivan in an hour of—” he paused and looked scornfully at his brothers, “—an hour of
discussion
, then we might as well have saved our breath. Can we tell him where to find this horse? Can we tell him what to do when he’s able to outrun Koshchey the Undying, but not kill him?” Vasya pulled his sodden fur hat from his head, glared at it, conceded at last that it was ruined and flung it into the sea. “Can we tell him anything, except that we can tell him nothing?”

“We can tell him to ask his wife.” Fenist Sokolov the Falcon spoke without raising his voice, but his words carried as well as if he had shouted. Heads turned, and the beginning of another acrimonious ‘discussion’ between Vasiliy and Fenist faded into silence. “Koshchey was held a prisoner for many years in Mar’ya Morevna’s kremlin. I think – no, I believe, that his capture of her is less an act of vengeance than of caution, from fear of what she knows, and what she can do to return him to his cell. So if her knowledge is the weapon he fears, then use it.”

“Koshchey always tried to catch us as fast as he could.” Ivan spoke slowly as he arranged the patterns of his thoughts to match what he wanted to say. “It happened twice, and both times when I saw his horse the poor beast was all but flayed alive. I thought that was just another demonstration of his cruelty, but…”

“But what if he was forcing the horse through fear?” said Mikhail the Raven. “Fear of what might happen if he failed to recapture Mar’ya Morevna? Think about that.”

“I thought about it long ago,” said Ivan. “About my wife Mar’ya Morevna, and the powers written in her books of magic. Until,” he touched his throat and made a little, rueful cough, “Koshchey the Undying gave me something else to think about. But I agree with all of you, just as all of you agree with me. What I want to do is what I need to do.”

The Princes looked at one another, wondering whose opinion had proven most useful, and then back to Ivan as he rose from his seat on the beach and dusted sand out of his garments.

“And what I want to do,” he said, “is see my wife again…”

*

The dark kremlin hadn’t changed since last he saw it, a lifetime ago. It was still as grim, still as dark, and still as lifeless as those times before, but now, knowing more than ever what he had to lose if he was caught, Ivan slipped into the kremlin on soft feet and left Burka and his noisy hoofs far, far away. The Princes had restored not only his life but also his horse, and Ivan hadn’t taken time to wonder how they did it.

He paused briefly to press a hand to his aching temples, envying Misha and the others whatever early training permitted such lavish expenditure of power without apparent cost. Mar’ya Morevna had tried to explain it once, using phrases like ‘
controlled
imbalance
of
forces
’ – which to Ivan’s minimally tutored ear suggested that his brothers-in-law were gaining advantage from giving short measure. If magic was like reading, they could understand monastic shorthand and his wife could read book-script, while he was still spelling out his words with great effort one letter at a time.

Simple though it was, the charm that learned from a distance if Koshchey was at home was taking its toll, hence his headache. At least he’d taken enough care to avoid another nosebleed. The feeling it gave him was like that delicate sense in the fingertips which warns, without needing to touch, if a coal fallen from the fire is still painfully hotter than it seems when its glow has turned to black.

Koshchey’s black kremlin was safely cold.

Even so Ivan had a sabre in his hand, one with silvered mounts and grip but a severely plain blade, a weapon for use not show. It had been given to him by Vasiliy the Eagle, handed over without a word, but with a tight embrace about the shoulders that drove all the breath from Ivan’s lungs.

Then there had been a flickering of light, and he’d taken his next breath in the chilly air surrounding Koshchey’s kremlin.

The sword’s fine edge would be useless against the master of the house, but Ivan, more cautious and more devious in his dealings with Koshchey the Undying, was prepared for other things. Armed and armoured guards were foremost in his mind. He had broken into the necromancer’s home not once but twice, proof enough that Koshchey’s reputation wasn’t the defence against thieves he might have hoped. Even an ordinary
kulak
merchant would have taken steps by now to stop the thief getting in so easily on any third occasion.

Yet the kremlin’s gates were open wide, there was neither sight nor sound of guards, and as he stood in the centre of the shadowed courtyard, Ivan knew he was almost alone in that sprawling heap of stone. He had crept softly for several minutes along the corridors leading to the high tower before he realized why Koshchey hadn’t taken further steps to defend his home against Prince Ivan.

When the realization struck, Ivan’s legs began to tremble until they refused to hold him up, and he had to press his back against the wall and slide down until he sat on the floor with those unsteady legs stuck out in front of him. There was a laugh bubbling up within him and he knew he daren’t let it out, but still – his chest heaved in great racking, silent sobs of mirth – there could be very few intruders with the privilege of knowing that walking in unchallenged this time is because last time, they were caught and…

And cut to pieces.

The laughter and the shaking went away as they had come, together, and Ivan pushed himself back up the wall until his legs were once more braced under his weight. He took several deep breaths to make sure he was back in control of himself, and then walked on towards the stairway leading in a spiral to the topmost chambers of the kremlin’s tallest tower.

And Mar’ya Morevna was there.

At first she refused to move from her chair by the window, for in her heart there was only disbelief, certain this was a trick sent by Koshchey to torment her steadfast memory. She held that conviction right up to the moment when Ivan walked across the room and gathered her into his arms, and then all beliefs went quite away, in the knowledge that her own dear husband was suddenly alive again. There was laughter, and there were tears, and there were long moments of silence.

And after that there was an explanation of what had happened, told as fully as Ivan was able. Mar’ya Morevna listened, nodding wisely, cool and calm and controlled once more. “So the Princes think Koshchey fears me,” she said, and looked at Ivan with a glitter in her eyes like sunlight from a razor’s edge. “He’s right to fear me. Very right indeed. Before all this, I’d have restored him to his cell, and let him live. Now I want what he tried to take from you. His life – and his damnation to the hottest pit of Hell!”

“How?”

“My father’s books contain many answers to that question, Vanya. I wouldn’t have used them before… Before Koshchey killed you. Now I’ll use as many as I need. But first,” she smiled thinly, wryly, knowing she was asking for the moon on a silver dish, “I need to reach them.”

Ivan looked at the stillness of Mar’ya Morevna’s beautiful face, and listened to the music in her gentle voice, and they frightened him more than any roar of wrath from Koshchey the Undying had ever done. Prince Vasiliy the Eagle had spoken much as she had done, choosing almost the same words and yet, though he was a great, strong, square-shouldered man and she a slender, lovely woman, it was her threat that rang more true. In that moment Ivan knew he would not exchange his own frail mortality for Koshchey’s eternal life; no, not for all his happiness on Earth or all his hopes of Heaven.

“That was what Misha suspected,” he said. “So I need a horse as fast as Koshchey’s. No, I need one that’s faster. I need to learn where to find it, and to learn that I’ll have to leave you here.”

“I expected nothing else,” she said, “so don’t fret. If you’d stolen me away, his horse would tell him as it did every other time. We’d get no further than last time before Koshchey overtook us and Vanya, I couldn’t live to lose you again.” Her voice didn’t have the softness of one speaking endearments but the firmness of one uttering a simple fact, and Ivan shivered as he realised what she meant. The towers of Koshchey’s kremlin were high and the courtyard was hard, unyielding stone. Mar’ya Morevna touched his cheek as if to brush away that evil thought. “I said, what would you have me do?”

Tsarevich Ivan moved his mouth in what was a smile only because there was no other way to describe it. “Be clever and pretty, Mar’ya Morevna,” he said. “Be wise and be witty. And have drink close to hand for when Koshchey comes home…”