The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy #3)(15)

“Girls!” said another voice. “Look at them, all alone. I could have a girl, after watching that…”

“You can die at their hands or you can come with me now,” the Bear said to Vasya. “It is all one to me; I will not ask again.”

One of Vasya’s eyes was swollen shut, the other blurred; perhaps that had made her slow to pick out a fourth person, watching from the shadows. This person had skin that was violet-black, and her hair was pale, blowing white across eyes like two stars. She was looking from the women to the Bear and said not a word.

This was the demon called Midnight.

“I do not understand,” Vasya whispered. She stood frozen between Varvara, who had kept secrets, and the Bear, who offered poisonous safety.

    Beyond them, silent, stood Lady Midnight. At the demon’s back, the woods seemed to have changed. They grew thicker, wilder, darker.

Varvara said, low and fierce in Vasya’s ear, “What do you see?”

“The Bear,” Vasya breathed. “And the demon called Midnight. And—a darkness. There is darkness behind her, such darkness.” She was shaking from head to foot.

“Run into the dark,” Varvara whispered to Vasya. “That was the message I had, and the promise. Touch the oak-sapling and run into the dark. That is the road, from here to the oak-tree by the lake. The road through Midnight opens every night to those with eyes to see. There will be refuge for you by the lake. Hold it in your mind; a stretch of water, shining, with a great oak that grows at the bow-curve of its shore. Run into the dark, and be brave.”

Whom to trust? The voices of men were growing louder. Their crunching footsteps broke into a run. Her only choices were fire or darkness or the devil in between.

“Go—go!” shouted Varvara. She placed Vasya’s bloody palm on the bark and shoved. Vasya found herself stumbling forward. The darkness loomed up, and then the Bear’s hand closed about her arm, an instant before the night swallowed her. She was spun to face him, her numb feet clumsy and scraping on the snow. “Go into the darkness,” he breathed. “And you will die.”

She had no words, no courage, no defiance left. She made no answer at all. The only thing that drove her to gather all her strength and wrench away from him, fling herself into the night, was the desire to get away, from him, from the noise, from the smell of fire.

She broke his grip and hurled herself into the dark. Instantly, the lights and the noise of Moscow were swallowed up. She was in a forest all alone, beneath an unsullied sky. She took one step forward, and then another. And then she tripped, fell to her knees, and could not muster the strength to rise. The last thing she heard was a half-familiar voice. “Dead just like that? Well, perhaps the old woman was wrong.”

Behind her, somewhere, it seemed the Bear was laughing again.

And then Vasya lay still, unconscious.



* * *





IN THE TRUE WORLD, the Bear’s breath hissed between his teeth, still with that edge of angry laughter. He said to Varvara, “Well, you have killed her. I didn’t even need to break my word to my brother. I thank you for that.”

Varvara said nothing. The Eater’s greatest power is his knowledge of the desires and weaknesses of men. Varvara’s mother had taught her much of the ways of chyerti. Varvara had tried to forget what she knew. What did it matter? She had not the eyes to see them, as her sister liked to remind her.

But now the Eater was free, and her mother and her sister were gone.

Two young men came stumbling up, drunk. In their eyes was a hungry light. “Well, you’re old and you’re ugly,” said one. “But you’ll serve.”

Without a word, Varvara kicked the first man between the legs, put a hard shoulder into the second. They fell yelping to the snow. She heard the Bear’s sigh of satisfaction. Above all, her mother had said, he is a lover of armies, of battles, and of violence.

Holding her skirts, Varvara ran, back to the lights, the chaos of the posad and thence up the hill of the kremlin. As she ran, she heard the Bear’s voice in her ears, though he had made no move to follow her. “I must thank you again, No-Eyes, that the little witch is dead, and my promise is unbroken.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Varvara whispered between clenched teeth. “Not yet.”





5.


    Temptation




THE CAGE COLLAPSED IN A shower of sparks, just as Sasha and Dmitrii battered through the ring of people and began to break the fire apart with their smoldering spear-hafts. The chaos rose to a fever pitch.

In the confusion, Konstantin Nikonovich slipped away, hood drawn up over the deep gold of his hair. The air was hazed with smoke; the maddened crowd jostled him, not knowing who he was. By the time the men had scattered the logs of the fire, Konstantin had passed through the posad unremarked, was making his soft-footed way back to the monastery.

She didn’t even deny her guilt, he thought, hurrying through the half-frozen slush. She had set fire to Moscow. It was the people’s righteous wrath that had swept her up. What blame could attach to him, a holy man?

She was dead. He’d taken the full measure of his vengeance.

She had been seventeen years old.

He barely made it to his cell and shut the door before he broke into a fit of sobbing laughter. He laughed at all those nodding, adoring, snarling faces out in Moscow, taking every word of his as gospel, laughed at the memory of her face, the fear in her eyes. He even laughed at the icons on the wall, their rigidity and their silence. Then he found his laughter turning to tears. Sounds of anguish tore from his throat, quite against his will, until he had to thrust a fist into his mouth to muffle the noise. She was dead. It had been easy, in the end. Perhaps the demon, the witch, the goddess had only existed in his mind.