Prince Ivan (4 page)

For the first and only time Ivan heard weariness in his father’s voice. There had been a time when there were only daughters, and the end of name and line seemed a very real possibility. Aleksandr and Ludmyla had been married more than five years before any children survived infancy. That had been Yekaterina, and it was Ivan’s unkind view that Death was too wary to go anywhere near her.

With Yelizaveta and Yelena following after, it must have seemed to Tsar Aleksandr that he would never have a son to carry on his name, and Khorlov would be inherited by whichever husband finally succeeded in winning the hand of Tsarevna Yekaterina. The Tsar didn’t envy the young princes of surrounding realms their task in the years to come for, even at three years old, Katya was already displaying the beginnings of such qualities of bravery, strong will and intelligence that any Tsar would have been glad to see.

At least, in a son.

In a daughter, never mind in three daughters – for as time passed Liza and Vasya soon showed that they were indeed Katya’s sisters in more than just parentage – they were qualities that made suitors choose to fight the Tatars on the steppes of Central Asia rather than risk incurring the wrath of such an intended bride. To hear it told about the kremlin palace, Tsarevich Ivan’s birth had been greeted not so much with a fanfare of trumpets, as by a general sigh of relief…

The Tsar leaned against the high back of his throne and drummed his fingers on the carved eagle-heads that capped its arms. “You may speak.”

“There’s little for me to say, Father.”

“Quite so. If you’re as wise as I believe, my son, you’ll not look for trouble. What with the Princes of Kiev and Novgorod, and the Tatars, and the Teutonic Knights with their fine black crosses, life is hard enough.”

“Especially now I have to find a wife.”

Tsar Aleksandr clapped his hands and laughed with ironic amusement. “No, Ivan,” he said, smiling thinly behind his beard. “Finding is easy. You have to
keep
her.”

CHAPTER TWO

Concerning
a
choice
of
husbands
,
and
what
the
Tsarevnas
thought
of
them

Hours followed hours and days followed days, until at last the summer was gone and leaves fell from the trees to rustle in drifts of red and gold all across the gardens of the kremlin.

The Tsarevnas Yelizaveta and Yelena had walked there on each and every day since the marriage of their sister, in hopes at first of yet another princely suitor making his appearance as Fenist the Falcon had done. As time slipped by, never slowing, never stopping, until it was gone beyond recall, they realized at last that all of the lost time was time wasted, time that might have been spent better in a search for a more ordinary husband, a lord’s son or a boyar’s, rather than the son of a sorcerer.

At least by doing so Archbishop Levon would speak kindly to them again, instead of making the sign of the cross whenever they chanced to meet. The good Archbishop had ceased to object to good Christian magic, by which he meant those small and simple sorceries which had as much cost in physical and mental effort as any honest toil. He had, however, formed his own opinions as to the source of Fenist the Falcon’s seemingly limitless power, and that source wasn’t one of which he or Holy Mother Church could approve.

As the sun slipped down the sky, the air grew chilly until at last Yelena went indoors. Yelizaveta walked alone for a while, kicking at the fallen leaves, then looked up quickly at the sound of other footsteps. Her face fell almost at once.

“You know how to make someone feel welcome,” said Tsarevich Ivan. He fell into step beside her, detouring occasionally to jab his own red-heeled boots into the heaps of windblown leaves that slithered across each other with a sound like parchment, and they walked in companionable silence for several minutes. Finally, he said, “It was cool when I came out, now it’s cold enough to see my breath. Come back inside.”

Ivan had never taken the trouble to speak to a stone wall, and now there was no need: his sister gave a reasonable idea of what the conversation would be like. He breathed out again, this time not for any sort of demonstration, but to make a small noise that was in part a grunt of irritation, but mostly a sympathetic sigh. It sounded like some sort of sneeze.

“Lizochka, look up. The sky’s clear. No stormclouds. No clouds at all, right to the horizon. Not a potential prince in sight anywhere. Just a star or two, and it’s going to get too cold to watch even them once the sun sets.”

“I wish…” said Yelizaveta, then hesitated and changed what she had been about to say, “I wish you’d go away and let me walk in peace.”

“I said I’d bring you indoors, and I will.”

“Wouldn’t you like to walk a little closer to that ornamental pond?” There was only the faintest suggestion of a twinkle in the way she glanced at him, a poor, watered-down version of the mischievous glint that would normally have accompanied such a threat. It was as if she had been sick and, though recovering, was still far from well. The glance lost focus and looked past Ivan in a way that made him wonder if there was an insect on his ear, but then Liza spoke.

“I thought you told me there were no clouds in the sky…?” Her voice was so strangely changed that Ivan asked no questions but swung right around, very fast, as if he was still at the fencing class he’d left barely half an hour before. Liza didn’t need to tell him anything else, because he could see well enough for himself.

It was as if a ragged patch of sunset had detached itself from the golden glow on the western horizon, but it came flitting across the sky more like a bat at dusk than any sort of cloud that Ivan had seen before. Its colours darkened as it left the light behind, shifting from gold to copper, and at last to the dark shades of bronze.

It was then they heard the first faint growl of thunder. “It looks, sister of mine, as though you’ve got whatever wish you didn’t speak aloud.”

Liza smiled a tight, uncertain smile. “That’s what the old tales say you should do.”

Lightning flickered in the twilight, sending a hot rose-gold light running through the approaching cloud, and the thunder that followed in its wake rose from a growl to a snarl. Yelizaveta looked still more uncertain and her smile wavered out of true for two whole seconds before it straightened up again. As accurately as if he’d heard her thoughts, that wobble told Ivan what other wise old saying she’d remembered from the stories:

‘
Be
careful
what
you
ask
for
–
you
may
get
it
.’

He wondered just exactly what she
had
asked for, and what they would do if it was other than expected. Then he realized with a sudden shiver of apprehension that he hadn’t an answer to either question, but plenty of uncomfortable possibilities for both. Since the arrival and departure of Prince Fenist the Falcon tore down the established barriers of his world, Ivan had taken time to look again at all the old stories he thought he knew so well. He had been reminded, to his unease, that there were more things living in the new and wider world beyond those barriers than just young men who could change their shape…

At least, and the realization came to him in a comforting rush like the warmth of a fire on a winter’s day, he was better armed than the last time something untoward began to happen. Having walked to the garden more or less directly from tuition in swordplay from Captain Akimov, Ivan still had a sword at his hip. It was a
shashka
, a light, curved sabre of the sort Akimov’s people preferred, and though it had none of the heft of a broad, straight Rus
shpaga
, the weapon was still a reassuring weight in his hand.

Yelizaveta started a little when the edge of the blade made a quiet scraping sound as it slid from its scabbard. It suggested to her, as no words could have done, that there might be more to this mysterious cloud and more to mysterious strangers than had seemed at first. Certainly there was more to her little brother, who seemed suddenly much older with a drawn sword in his hand.

Almost
dangerous
, was her thought until he turned to face her, and for the first time saw a glint in his eyes that was more than just reflection from the sunset and the steel. There was no
almost
about it.

“Go inside,” he said, and it sounded as if the words had been clipped short by the swordblade. Ivan spoke in a voice of command that would not disgrace the Tsar he would some day become. Liza didn’t hesitate; she went inside at once.

And then summoned the guards.

Ivan looked at the sweep of the
shashka’s
razor-sharp edge, then at the swiftly-approaching cloud. He shook his head, more nervous than he would ever have admitted to Lizochka. Having seen what the powers of the Falcon Prince had done to stone and timber, steel was unlikely to be much protection against something malevolent. Ivan swallowed, and crossed himself three times in case that would do some good. He could hear the clatter of Captain Akimov’s soldiers as they marched from the kremlin and drew up in battle array, but he didn’t turn. Ivan didn’t want to take his eyes off the cloud, not for the duration of a single heartbeat even though at the rate his own heart was beating, that interval would have been brief indeed.

There was another flash of lightning at the heart of the cloud, not blue-white like the other natural and unnatural lightnings that Ivan had seen, but a golden light like that of heated copper. As if borne on the wings of the thunder that rumbled across the garden, a wind began to rise. At first it merely sifted among the drifts of leaves, disturbing them no more than Ivan and Liza had done when kicking with their boots. Then suddenly and without warning it rose to a whistling gale. The piled leaves whirled high, filling the air with bronze and russet fragments lit by the glare of that strange lightning. Tsarevich Ivan put both hands to his sabre’s hilt, braced his feet against the storm, and waited for the worst.

*

A ragged spear of lightning thrust out of the dark cloud and rode on thunder through the splitting air right over Ivan’s head before it stabbed in a great splash of blinding golden sparks against the kremlin roof. Vivid light spilled out through the open doorway where the guardsmen stood, flinging their shadows straight and stark across the windblown garden so it seemed there were silhouettes of armed men painted black upon the farthest wall. It was nothing a sword could have protected him against, so it was just as well that neither he nor Liza needed that protection. Ivan grinned with relief as he slammed the sabre back into its scabbard, and by then he was already running for the kremlin’s garden door.

There was a hole in the roof and in the ceiling, but no debris on the floor except leaves blown inside by the wind. In the midst of it all was a roiling column of fire, a rich bronze-coloured fire that gave no heat and did no harm, and in the midst of the fire, wings spread wide, was an eagle with feathers as bright as gold, as red as copper.

As Ivan watched, the eagle struck itself against the floor, and instinctively he knew that was the second time. Once more it struck, and the fire surrounding it swirled once and went away. With the fire went the eagle, for it became a fine young man dressed all in red and russet. His coat was brocaded with pure gold, and its trimming was all of bronze-gold eagle’s feathers. The young man, broad-shouldered and strong, looked at Yelizaveta with his light brown eyes and they smiled at one another like lovers long parted.

Ivan, standing in the doorway with the guardsmen crowding at his back, uttered a single swift order that his father and the dignitaries of the court should be brought here without delay. Then he cleared his throat with the small, significant cough of someone who preferred not to be ignored for a moment longer. The Eagle Prince – for though he hadn’t yet spoken it was certain he would call himself by such a title – nodded slightly to Liza, the nod of one who breaks a conversation that will surely be resumed as soon as possible, and bowed deeply to Ivan.

“Wealth to you, Prince Ivan,” he said. “When I was in Khorlov before, I came as but a guest. Now I return as a suitor, and I ask that you give me the hand of your sister, the Tsarevna Yelizaveta.”

Ivan bowed in turn, and when he straightened he was smiling. “Sir,” he said, “a wise man does not give commands to his sisters. First you must speak to the Tsar my father, and ask his permission to wed.”

“And you may do that on the instant,” said Tsar Aleksandr from the doorway of the palace behind them, his voice filled with the satisfaction of one who, by his own effort, has arrived right on cue. He was flanked by two guards and they were all three out of breath, though that didn’t detract in the slightest from the Tsar’s dignity as he stared at this latest uninvited guest within his walls. “But first, you should tell us your name.”

Still smiling, the young man bowed again, more deeply than before. “Tsar’s Majesty,” he said, “I am Vasiliy Charodeyevich Orlov, Prince of the Wide Steppes, and I have come here to marry your daughter.”

“Then Prince of the Wide Steppes and sorcerer’s son, you must know the promise we gave our children. Bear this in mind when I tell you I will not give permission to wed, but only permission to woo. I say only that if Lizochka will have you, she may.”