Prince Ivan (28 page)

*

Hoofs rang in the courtyard below the window of the high tower, and Mar’ya Morevna leaned forward to look out. She watched Koshchey the Undying cross the cobblestones at a gallop, then haul back on his reins to wrench his black horse to a skidding, sparking standstill. Mar’ya Morevna watched him stable the horse, take off its saddle, and give it hay and water; but she saw how he didn’t take the brutal bit from its soft mouth, for once out, the horse would have died fighting him before it let that bit back in.

She turned away, frowning – and then turned back, listening to the voices from the courtyard as they said things that made her raise her eyebrows and smile a secret smile. Koshchey, as he had done so often before, was demanding that the horse tell how matters lay in his realm. Mar’ya Morevna could hear the animal’s replies quite clearly, and just as clearly she could hear that its answers were far from complete. Though it mentioned she was still safely imprisoned it said no word about Tsarevich Ivan, alive and well and hiding in a linen-chest outside her rooms, and her smile grew wider as she realized why. Koshchey was cruel, but Ivan had been kind.

Mar’ya Morevna lifted a flask of vodka and took out its stopper. She turned it over in her fingers then, as she waited for her captor to climb up the many stairs, she flung that stopper into the heart of the fire. The door of her room flew open and rebounded with a crash from its stops, and as Koshchey the Undying came in she poured vodka for herself, then turned to glare at him.

“Mannerless peasant! Is this the way you enter the rooms of a high-born widowed lady?” She threw the vodka at his face.

Koshchey blocked the spray of stinging liquor with an upflung hand and brushed the rest from his beard. “I smell a Russian smell,” he said, glowering from beneath his eyebrows as he stalked around the room. Mar’ya Morevna chuckled unpleasantly in her throat and poured more vodka, spilling much of it across her hand and the rest across the floor.

“
You
smell,” she said. She drank down the little that remained, then poured herself another. “And you still fear my husband, though you killed him. That’s the Russian smell you think is here: no more than your own fear, born of the good and wholesome smells of Russia that caught on your clothing as you rode across Moist-Mother-Earth.”

Mar’ya Morevna looked at the cup in her hand and, as she looked, it trembled so most of the liquor spilled out. She changed hands to shake the last drops from her fingers, then filled the cup again.

“How much have you drunk today?” said Koshchey, looking for the stopper of the vodka flask and seeing not a trace of it.

“Not enough to compensate for a life spent with you!” She flung the contents of her refilled cup at Koshchey, but missed him when he ducked. Then she laughed a wild, eerie laugh that would have raised the hackles of a mortal man. “Sit down and drink with me, Koshchey the Undying, Koshchey the Old, and tell me how it was in the world before I knew only sorrow.” She waved the vodka flask at him, and crystal drops of spirit that were as clear as the Water of Life splashed across the rich rugs on the floor. “And maybe I might tell you how it was when I was happy, long ago.”

Koshchey was nothing loath, for though she was his enemy and his prisoner, she was the fairest Princess in all the Russias and neither prison nor vodka could ever take that from her. Mar’ya Morevna’s hair was bright against the darkness of her widow’s garments, for she had pushed back the black cowl around her face. Though she could never be called merry, in her resigned and bitter way she made a good companion for one who down the years had seen all his friends die, or had slain them himself. It was as if she had finally realized she was a widow and decided to make the best of things. So she talked, and she mocked, and she drank like a Russian, and because he was unwilling to be beaten by a woman, Koshchey drank to match her cup for cup.

What he didn’t see was the amethyst set at the bottom of her cup, nor the amethyst ring on her hand, turned so that the stone was inward out of sight, nor the great amethyst crystal hanging on a golden chain around her neck, beside the cross that she wore always. Wise men had written that amethyst gave protection against strong drink, and Mar’ya Morevna had read those writings. But she also took care that when Koshchey wasn’t watching, she emptied her cup out of the window, or among the roots of the great plants set in tubs to make her cell look less a prison, and when there was no way to divert his eye, she would spill some of her drink then make sure to laugh so hard at her mistake that all the rest was spilled as well.

Mar’ya Morevna knew all about the supposed powers of amethyst, but she believed in being practical as well.

They drank vodka, and then they drank wine, and when the wine was done, they drank
kvas
, and beer, and even some
kumys
that Koshchey found in its leather bottle, hanging from a hook somewhere. And Koshchey the Undying, though proof against blades and proof against poison, became most monstrously drunk. He was content: his most annoying enemy was dead and hacked to pieces, floating somewhere on the Azov Sea as food for fish; his next enemy was a despairing captive in his kremlin, so much resigned to her lot as prisoner and widow that she had talked and drunk with him, and even made him laugh; and his name was once more held in the fear and respect that had been proper many years ago.

Koshchey closed his eyes and dozed, waking just enough to drink from the cup that Mar’ya Morevna kept filled for him but not enough to see that she no longer even made pretence to fill her own. When she spoke to him he laughed when it seemed proper, and for the rest answered in a drowsy voice close to the edge of sleep.

Until at last he slept.

Mar’ya Morevna looked at her cup, and at the amethyst within it, and grinned a crooked grin at the crystal as if it was a fellow conspirator. Whether through the power of the stone, or by her own sleight of hand in spilling, losing or in other ways disposing of what had been in that cup, she felt no more ill effects from five hours of constant drinking than a slight, slow swirling behind her eyes, and a tendency, hastily and carefully corrected, to put her feet on places where there was no floor beneath them.

She looked at Koshchey the Undying, sprawled back in his chair with bubbles dripping from his slack-lipped mouth at every grating snore, and felt her fingers itching for the hilt of a knife. If only the satisfaction of slitting his throat would do some permanent good… Which it would not. Mar’ya Morevna dismissed the notion and walked unsteadily from the room.

“The things I do for you,” she said very softly, breathing the words instead of whispering them so that the sibilance of a whisper wouldn’t carry.

Tsarevich Ivan, released from the linen-chest, could smell the words as well as hear them, and grinned in the dim light of the distant lamps. He needed no further explanation of what she had done, nor any assurance of its success. Mar’ya Morevna’s presence was proof enough of that.

“What did he tell you?” he asked just as softly after kissing her cheek, “and is it of any use?”

“He told me enough and more than enough.” Mar’ya Morevna’s voice was soon more sober than her breath or her movements would have suggested. It was as if what she knew, and what she said in that hasty tumbling of words, was burning all the drunkenness away. “First take his riding-whip from the saddle in the stable, and then ride east. You’ll come to a river of fire—”

Ivan opened his mouth to say something, saw her expression change, and closed it again with a snap of teeth.

“Have you come thus far, and still want to ask questions? Vanya my loved, you took leave of the world of small, safe magics when Prince Fenist wed your sister. This is the world of tales, and dreams, and nightmares. So listen well! When you come to the river, wave the whip three times with your right hand, and ride across the bridge. Then wave it again with your left hand, and ride on. When you reach your destination, you’ll know it. Do as you’re instructed, nothing more, and as you love me, don’t linger when your time is done. The moon is on the wane, and twelve nights remain for me to leave this dreadful place. Only twelve nights – and that includes this one.”

Ivan said nothing until she had finished speaking, and then held her hands as he looked into her eyes. For the first time, he saw a flicker of despair swirl in their depths like a shark’s fin cutting water. “Can’t you tell me where I’m going?” he asked. “Or what I’ll have to do when I get there?”

Mar’ya Morevna released his hands from hers, and put her arms around his neck, and held him as tightly as though he was going to his death. There were tears standing in her eyes when at last she let him go. Then she said, “Vanya, my loved, my darling one, you must guard horses for three days to earn one as swift as that which Koshchey rides. And you must guard them in the land of Baba Yaga.”

Mar’ya Morevna kissed her husband on the forehead and the lids of his eyes; then on each cheek and at last, lightly, on the mouth. It was the way she would have kissed him had he been laid on silk in a fine coffin. Then, swiftly, before her tears began to fall, she turned and walked away.

*

Ivan crept towards the stable, waiting for the first sound to warn his presence here had been discovered. Making Koshchey drunk had seemed a good idea at the time, but now the step was taken he remembered things that should have been considered long before. Most important of all was Koshchey’s drunkenness. Though steel and venom couldn’t harm him, it was plain that wine and ale could overpower him – but for how long? The effect of too much alcohol was little different to poison, which meant it wouldn’t affect Koshchey the Undying as much as a mortal man. Tsarevich Ivan found himself wondering how soon the necromancer would recover, and how soon after that he would discover that his whip was gone, and swallowed down a throat too recently recovered from the last time it was cut.

The stable was dark, and Ivan was glad he’d thought to bring a shuttered lantern with him from the kremlin. He opened it a crack to let a little light escape, then almost dropped the lantern when its flame reflected back from eyes that seemed as large as saucers. Koshchey’s black horse stirred amid its straw, watching Ivan with those huge eyes that never blinked. He stared back at it, remembering it could use the speech of men and therefore cry a warning – but he also saw more intelligence in this animal’s eyes than in those of many people he had known in Khorlov. Though he knew the black horse could snap his fingers off as it might snap a bunch of carrots, he stroked its soft nose as he had done once before. “Hush now,” he whispered, “and go back to sleep.”

“I can sleep once you’ve gone, Prince Ivan,” said the horse, and though he was familiar enough with sorcery, Ivan still flinched at the sound. Being told this horse could speak was little preparation for hearing it do so, especially in such a voice. Formed in so huge a chest and neck, it was far deeper than the deepest bass; inhumanly deep, as was entirely right and proper when the speaker wasn’t human. The horse looked at Ivan, and though it hadn’t the shape of mouth to smile, it flared its nostrils and snickered with amusement. “If you’re here for what I think, you’ll find it with his saddle.”

Ivan went to where the horse had indicated with a shake of its great head, and found a saddle resting on a padded bar. He stared at its sleek, smooth leather and shuddered with suspicion of that leather’s origin, then reached out, took Koshchey’s riding whip from where it rested on the pommel, and for the look of things replaced it with another from the wall. The whip was ordinary-looking when compared to the sinister saddle, so ordinary that he took it back and showed it to the horse. The black horse put its ears flat back against its skull, and bared its teeth.

“You needn’t doubt, Prince Ivan,” it said in that huge, soft voice. “I know that whip. I know the sight and smell of it. And the weight and cut of it as well.”

“More than you or any horse deserved,” said Ivan, made almost as angry by that as by all of Koshchey’s other crimes. He coiled the whip tightly and thrust it through his belt, turned to go, and then looked back at the black horse. “And if he needs to use the magic of the whip? What then?”

“Come back swiftly and he need never know,” said the black horse. “But there’s no need to worry on that score. Not even Koshchey the Undying goes to Baba Yaga’s country unless he has no choice, and now he has me there’s no need to go again.” It showed its teeth at the expression on Ivan’s face. “I could have told you things that seemed encouraging,” it said, “but they might have made you careless. This way you’ll beware of everything you see, and have a better chance of life.”

“Horse, black horse,” said Ivan with a crooked smile, “the Tsars of the wide white world should all have such a councillor as you, then all of them would be too frightened to indulge in war.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “But what’ll happen when I take something of Koshchey’s from his kremlin?”

“You mean, will I tell him? Look at my back, Prince Ivan. See how my skin is split by that same whip. Now ask again if you still need an answer.”

“Why?”

“Because yours is the first kind voice I’ve heard in all my life.” The black horse saw disbelief in Ivan’s face and snorted angrily that it should be doubted. “Baba Yaga owned me when I was a colt running in her horse-herd, then I became the steed of Koshchey the Undying, and your wife Mar’ya Morevna knows me only as the means by which Koshchey recaptures her. Not one of them have ever spoken kindly except you, when you pitied my whipped back and wouldn’t leave me for the wolves.”