“Second to none,” the Sea King said with pride.
“Then a clever girl would arrange to have herself carried off just like the others. I think we can assume that is what she did.” The green dragon Gina looked at her mate, and Sasha could have sworn that she smiled at him. Could dragons smile? “It is what I would have done.”
“You are clever and rather too inclined to charge in before reconnoitering,” said Adamant, but there was amusement in his voice.
“A dragon can afford to do that,” she pointed out, and laughed.
“You did it when you were a knight, too.” Adamant shook his head at her. “Don’t forget, I was there. I remember it very well, you charging up to the cliff, and shaking your fist at me.” He pitched his voice higher. “Come back here, fell beast! Coward! Scum! Wretched thing of evil! Come back here and taste my steel!”
Sasha looked from one dragon to the other, and couldn’t help but feel any vestige of control over this situation slipping away. And—the dragon was once a knight? This was seeming evermore impossible. “Ah, excuse me please, but my betrothed is in danger—”
“Ah—I beg your pardon.” Adamant immediately became all business, and Gina sobered. “I don’t think this girl—”
“Ekaterina—” said the King, and “Katya,” Sasha said at the same time. They looked at each other.
“Katya,” said the King.
“Katya is not in immediate danger, but that could change. Do either of you know what a ‘Jinn’ is?”
Sasha shook his head. “A Fire Spirit,” the King said. “It lives in deserts. Some are good, some are bad, and I think we can assume this one is bad.” He shrugged. “That is all that I know, I am afraid. We’re not much given to deserts around here.”
“Any reason why it would kidnap maidens?” asked Gina.
The King shook his head. “From the little I know of them, this is not the sort of thing that Jinni do. They can’t be bothered with humans, much. They despise mortals.”
But several disparate pieces of information clicked into a whole in Sasha’s mind at that moment, and he spoke up with the answer. “Because it is living in the Katschei’s castle,” replied Sasha. “The Tradition is trying to make it fit.”
“Aha. That makes perfect sense.” Gina looked at Adamant again. “Are you thinking what I am thinking?”
“That the Jinn is making the best of what it is being forced to do by taking maidens inherently magical so that it can use their magic?” Adamant hazarded. “That means they will probably be safe for now if they don’t go making trouble.” He pondered again. “Time to reconnoiter. And look for allies. They should be easy to come by. Even the nastiest of creatures native here is going to object to having this Jinn drop a desert in their garden.” He pondered again. “Do you think we need the bird anymore?”
Gina shook her head. “We know where the castle is. I think we can let it go.” And before Sasha could say anything, she lifted a rock, and a brightly colored paper bird shot up into the sky and was gone.
He looked after it wistfully. If they hadn’t been so hasty, he could have written something on it. Even just We’re coming and his own name. He rather doubted the dragons had been able to write on something that small.
Well, it was done. At least now she would know she wasn’t alone. He took comfort in that, and turned his attention back to the planning.
* * *
Katya worked at the ground around the roots of the roses. Whoever it was who had built this place first, it was not the Katschei. The original plants here had all been lovely, not the nightshade, the belladonna, the spider-lilies that the Katschei had favored. This bed of roses in particular was responding to her ministrations, and those of Klava, with a vegetable gratitude. New shoots were forming, the bushes were covered with healthy leaves, and two of the bushes in particular, a red and a white, were in full bloom. The white roses especially were ones that Katya loved; the blossoms had a unique honey scent she would gladly have worn as a perfume.
It was in this mood that the paper bird found her, darting down from the sky like an attacking wasp to hover in front of her nose.
She forgot all about the roses in a surge of shock and elation. “You found help!” she breathed. “Show me what they say!”
The bird unfolded. The inside of the page was blank.
She faltered. “But—you did find help!”
The bird folded itself back up and bobbed madly.
Suddenly it dawned on her. “They can’t write!”
The bird bobbed again.
She had specified that her Champion be able to read—but not write. Perhaps there just hadn’t been anything to write with…not everyone would think of writing with a bit of soft lead, or a piece of charcoal from the fire—or maybe they didn’t have a fire, or lead around.
But the bird was unfolding and refolding itself, and when it was done, it was no longer a bird, but a tiny paper dragon. Her eyes widened.
“A dragon is the Champion?” Affirmative bobbing. Now moving so fast it was a blur, the bird unfolded, refolded, and became a man—then a balalaika—then a dragon again. She frowned over that. “A dragon—wait—two dragons? And a man—not Sasha?” It had become a bird again, and the bird was bobbing affirmatives like a mad thing. “Oh, little bird, you did well!” she crowed, and the bird dropped into her hand, just paper once more. She tucked it into her waterproof envelope just as she “heard” the Jinn swiftly approaching. The wretched thing was infernally sensitive to magic—or at least, to the magic happening around her. Or maybe it was only to spells in use. Or maybe it was spells he didn’t recognize.
She felt him looming over her, but did not turn around. “Were you wasting magic again?” he growled from directly behind her.
“There was a wasp,” she said shortly. “It stung me, and I purged myself of the poison. Would you rather I sickened?”
He grunted; she sensed him turning on his heel, and felt him leave.
But he did not leave the castle; she still could not tell exactly where he was, but she knew he was near enough to be within its walls. She decided to wait things out in the garden. There was no point in rushing to the others with her news, especially not if he had suspicions of her.
The others—there were ten of them now. Klava was not the only human; there was a young gypsy hedge-witch, and a girl who talked to animals without ever having tasted dragon’s blood. There was a bear-girl who was just as irritated at being taken as Lyuba was, if not more so. And there were two creatures from a Tradition that Katya did not even recognize; a fragile girl wearing what looked like a wedding dress, and a silent dark-eyed, dark-haired girl who had yet to say a word to any of them—not that she seemed hostile, just very wary. Katya had her suspicions about the one in the wedding dress; she had the notion that the poor thing was a ghost, and not a girl at all. If that was true, then there was an escape for her, and as soon as the Jinn was gone and she was able to relay her news, she was going to try talking to the poor thing.
As for the dark one…she had no clue at all. The Jinn must be straying far afield to have gathered that one in. Katya didn’t blame her for being wary; in her shoes, Katya would have been the same.
The humming faded and finally vanished. She left off her gardening, dusted off her hands, and headed for the shared room. By now it was rather full, but no one really wanted to move out. Probably they all felt safer together. Katya certainly liked having the others about. True, the Jinn’s guards and servants had never offered any offense, but they had also never been given the opportunity to.
There must have been something about her that alerted all of them as she stepped in through the doorway because they all fell silent and looked at her expectantly.
She nodded and smiled. “We have Champions,” she said simply.
They were all too cautions, too careful about attracting attention, to cheer. Cheering would bring down some form of notice, if not from the Jinn himself, then certainly from one or more of his gu
ards. But each reacted according to her nature. Lyuba jumped up, transformed to Wolf form, and capered for a moment. Klava clapped her hands, as did the girl who spoke to animals. Yulya bent her head and heaved a sigh of relief, as did the new girl in white. Marina threw her arms around Yulya, who hesitated, then hugged her back. The gypsy bit back an exclamation of triumph, and the dark girl and the bear-girl merely looked fiercely pleased.
“Tell us!” Klava demanded. The rest gathered closely around to hear what she had to say.
“One of them is Prince Alexsandr of Led Belarus, my betrothed Sasha,” she said, and blushed. “But he is not one of the Champions.”
“What is he then?” asked Klava. “A great warrior?”
She had to laugh at that. “Better. A Songweaver.”
No matter what Tradition they came from, it seemed that all of the girls knew what a Songweaver was. “We call that a Skald,” said the dark one, looking impressed. “Is he a Greater or a Lesser Skald? Does he tell The Tradition a new path and make it listen and heed him, or does he cajole it into believing that his way is the Path it wishes to take?”
“Oh, it is persuasion he does.” Katya smiled. The dark girl nodded.
“That may well be of more use to us,” was all she said, but Katya felt her warm approval.
“The other two—” she paused for effect “—are dragons.”
Well that certainly put the fox in the henhouse! It was a good thing that the Jinn was gone because the babble that arose was enough to wake the dead. Katya just let it run out, since she knew she wouldn’t get a word in anyway. Fortunately it wasn’t so much noisy as it was confusing with everyone trying to talk at once. When they all finally ran out of things to say—mostly about frying pans and fires—she spread her hands.
“I haven’t got a lot of answers for you. The amount of information I can get from my bird is quite small.” They nodded at that, and accepted it. That was a relief. “All I know is this. They are Champions, or my bird wouldn’t have gone to them. I was very specific on that point. If they are Champions, that means that they will fight to free us. And Sasha wouldn’t be with them if they weren’t going to help us. He is not easily deceived.”
There were glances all around. Finally it was Klava who said, a little reluctantly, “Well, if they really are Champions…”
Lyuba began to chuckle. “Oh think! Dragons! No matter how powerful the Jinn is—these are dragons! They’ll make him think twice, at least!”
“And we really need to find that bottle,” Katya said firmly. “It does us no good to fight and defeat the Jinn if we can’t confine him again, because I don’t think we can actually kill something like him. It’s time for all of us to put every moment we can into the hunt.”
“You know,” the bear-girl said slowly, “we might be going about this all wrong. Instead of finding where it is, it will be easier to find where it isn’t. We need to make a map of the castle and start eliminating places.”
“There is one. It’s in the guardroom. The old one, that the Jinn’s people don’t use.” That was the gypsy. “I’ll bring it here. Then we can search every room completely.”
Katya nodded. “And it might sound like a waste of time, but I think each one of us ought to go over every room. We each have abilities that the others don’t.” There was a sly look from the gypsy, and Katya thought wryly, And I know what yours are, because she knew for a fact that the “old” guardroom had been locked the last time she’d checked it. Well, having someone who could pick locks around was going to be heaven-sent.
As the gypsy slipped out, and the others gathered to discuss how to perform the searches, the girl in white sidled up to Katya. “You want to talk to me,” she whispered.
Katya nodded, and put her hand comfortingly on top of the girl’s. It was ice cold, as she had suspected. “You aren’t alive, are you?”
Two slow tears formed in the girl’s colorless eyes and trickled down her cheeks. “No,” she said, simply. “I am a Wili. We are the spirits of women who died because of the treachery of men. The man I loved deceived me, and I—died.”
Suicide, she suspected. Not unlike the Rusalkas, then, these Wili. “Oh, you poor thing—” Katya left her hand atop the girl’s despite the chill. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Guiliette.” She sighed. “I should not be here—I can only walk by night. I do not know how this Jinn managed to capture me—nor how he keeps me walking by day—” A faint blue flush suffused her cheeks. “Nor how he keeps me from what I am cursed to do.”
Katya sighed. “Murder young men, is it?” she asked.
The Wili started. “How do you know?” she gasped.
“Because the Rusalkas of my Tradition are much the same.” She gave Guiliette a long and measuring look. “And I think that there is an escape for you, not only from here, but also from your curse, so you can go on.”
Now the Wili went so pale she was almost transparent. “Why do you tell me this?”
“Because if any of us can escape from here, we should. Because I don’t think you are happy with what you are. Because—” She shrugged. “Because, Guiliette, you should stop being a Wili, and—and go on. I know that this works for Rusalkas, so it should work for you. This won’t be an easy thing,” she warned. “But it’s deceptively simple. You have to forgive, really forgive, the man who betrayed you.”
The blue flush suffused the Wili’s cheeks. “Ne—!” she began, enraged—
—then stopped herself.
“That is the point, isn’t it?” she replied slowly. Katya nodded. “Forgiving the one that betrayed me…forgiving all that pain, the despair…it is almost impossible.”
“That is why so few Rusalkas manage,” Katya said gently.
“I…will think on this,” Guiliette said, and sighed. “But I can do one thing that none of you can. I can still pass myself through things. So—”
She lifted her hand, and it passed right through Katya’s with a feeling of terrible chill and a vague nausea. Katya repressed her shivers.
“I can look for hidden passages, hiding places, in the walls,” the Wili continued. “And I do not sleep. So I will do this. Yes? And whatever betides I will not leave you all until you have found that bottle.”
“Yes, please,” Katya said, and smiled warmly at her. “You are a treasure to us, Guiliette. Thank you.”
“It is little enough I can do, and none of you deserve to be here,” Guiliette replied. Then out of nowhere came a tiny little smile, the first that Katya had seen on her face. “It is good to feel useful again.”
“Yes it is,” Katya said softly, watching the ghost-girl drift out of the room in search of the castle’s secrets. “It always is.”
* * *
There were Tritons and Mer-folk in the waters closest to the Jinn’s desert, waiting to hear if there was anything that the rescuers needed that the Sea King could provide. Sasha had gotten his ride on a dragon, much to his terror and delight. Take the ride in Baba Yaga’s mortar and add to it the ride on the Goat, and the result might be half of the experience of riding on a dragon. When he slid shakily down off Adamant’s back once they were on the mainland, it was with two conflicting feelings inside. He wanted to do it again immediately. He never wanted to do it again, not under any circumstances.
But right now they had some other priorities. Sasha needed clothing that wasn’t crusted with salt, and food and drink. Gina scouted him a village, although he would have been willing to swear there couldn’t be any such thing here, and Adamant put him down near it while the two flew off to scout conditions around the Castle of the Katschei. If there was any way to reach it without being seen…
He went into the village, after beating the worst of the damage out of his clothing. It was too bad about the boots; they’d need oiling and oiling and re-oiling to get them fit to wear. There were, fortunately, people here who, if not actual merchants, were still willing to sell him things. He still had the Queen of Copper Mountain’s coins, and silv
er spoke a universal language—though he could make himself understood, as the tongue spoken in that remote place was not unlike that of Led Belarus. He found a woman doing laundry quite happy to part with a shirt and trews right off the line, a cobbler who had a pair of boots in his stock that fit when Sasha had on two pairs of socks, and several folks who would cheerfully sell him all manner of odds and ends. Once again, for the third time on this journey, he found himself with a new set of clothing, pack, and traveler’s essentials.
And when the dragons returned to him with the dismal news that there was no way in which they were going to be able to get anywhere near that castle without being easily seen, even by night, he already had a plan in mind.
“What we need,” he said, “is someone who can get into and out of the castle. Something insignificant, that wouldn’t be noticed or missed. I think I know just the person, but I have to track him down.”
With that, he explained everything he knew about Sergei, the Little Humpback Horse.
“That is a good notion,” Adamant observed. “The information we can get or give with the bird is very limited, but if you can find your friend—he would be ideal.”
“The other idea I had was this,” he continued, and grimaced, just a little. “We don’t know just how apt these girls will be at helping us to fight, and I think we have to assume that they won’t be of much use. So before we take on the Jinn, we need to get them somewhere safe. If we can’t go through the air or on the ground to get them out—we could go under it.”
Both dragons regarded him with a jaundiced eye. “We don’t burrow like moles, you know,” Adamant said, a little testily.
“Not you. I was thinking the Queen of the Copper Mountain. Look there—” From enough time staring at those beaded tapestries, he would know the shape of the Copper Mountain anywhere, and he pointed to it. “There it is. The Jinn’s desert is—there.”
Adamant and Gina both blinked. “They are…surprisingly close.”
“I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn the Queen already has tunnels under the Katschei’s land,” he admitted. “She’s a neutral creature, neither good nor evil. I have no doubt she traded with him. I have no doubt she trades with virtually everyone and everything in this part of the world. Think of it—she is secure in her mountain fortress, and can cut off access merely by collapsing tunnels. She has no wish to conquer anything above the surface. She was and is in the perfect position to trade with everyone and favor no one. The trick will be to get her to agree to extend those tunnels into the Katschei’s dungeons. If she’ll do that, we can get the hostages out.”
A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2 Page 23
