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.”
Ivan said nothing. Instead he bowed low to the worthy animal, walked out of the stable, and the kremlin, and returned to where Burka was tethered.
And then he rode out of the lands of men.
*
Ivan couldn’t tell if he had ridden east for many hours or few. It seemed a little time, and yet a long, since he left Koshchey’s kremlin far behind, but in that long or little time the world had changed. The green steppes of Mother Russia were gone from under Burka’s hoofs, and now there was a rolling plain of ash and cinders, black and grey, dusty and dead. If ever there was somewhere in the world well-suited to a fiery river, this was it. And yet there was no sign of any river, filled with flame or filled with water, even though the thought of water in this desert was an ugly joke.
East, always east, was the sole direction he had been given, and east, always east, was the direction he rode though there was no sun in the grey sky for him to follow. Sky and ground, horse and rider, all were the same colour. Burka had been grey before, but within ten minutes of their reaching the ash desert, Ivan had turned grey to match. He stopped the horse and looked about him though there was nothing to see but the long
, dense plume of dust that marked their passage through the ash. He wondered for a moment if he had lost his way in this trackless waste and had been riding north or south instead, but then he sniffed at the dry, unmoving air and knew he wasn’t lost after all.
It wasn’t the smell of smoke but the smell of fire itself that hung before him, and far, far away on what might have been the horizon had not grey run into grey without a boundary, he saw a shimmering of heat. Ivan didn’t gallop towards it: he had no desire to come upon the river of fire too suddenly to stop, and in this strange world where near was far and far was near, that risk was all too real. Instead he swung down from the saddle and took Burka’s bridle in his hand, and side by side they walked carefully towards the distant dance of shimmer on the air.
And without warning, as suddenly as he had feared, they stood right on its brink.
The river of fire lay within the chasm it had eaten for itself out of the very living rock of Mother Earth – if this place was any part of the wide world at all – and in the featureless grey landscape it crouched invisible from sight until he was close enough to look straight down into the chasm. And almost close enough to fall into it.
In his mind the river of fire had been like an impossibly long hearth, all leaping flames and glowing embers. There were flames here indeed, but few of them, small licking tongues of ghostly white, and no embers at all. But there was a glow like the maw of a furnace and an upward blast of heated air that stirred Ivan’s hair around his face, rising from a broad and sluggish stream of molten rock that looked and moved like incandescent honey. Tsarevich Ivan gazed down at it and listened to the vast eternal muttering of the earth-fires that kept it hot. He wiped his streaming eyes and shivered just a little bit, despite the heat. If anyone should fall into that river there would be no swimming to shore, and neither drops nor buckets of the Waters of Life and Death would do a thing to help.
He backed away with beads of sweat glinting like diamonds on his face and looked at Koshchey’s whip. It was no more than a wooden handle bound in leather, and a plaited bullhide lash. Vicious to be hit with, certainly – Ivan’s face and Koshchey’s horse both knew that much – but so very ordinary for the task it was supposed to do. Yet he would have to try it, to find if it worked or not, or turn back now and admit defeat. At least waving a whip in the air cost little effort, and if nothing happened and he looked foolish, there was no one here to witness it save Burka. And he at least couldn’t repeat what he had seen.
Right now the grey horse was flicking his ears in disapproval of the heat, the dust, and most especially the low rumbling growl that drifted up from the fiery river. Ivan patted his noble steed on the neck, raising a cloud of dust. Either there would be a bridge for them to cross, or there would be no crossing. The chasm was too wide for any horse to jump. He put his right hand through the wrist-strap of the whip, gripped it tightly with his fingers, wondered if there were some words he had to say then waved it anyway, once, twice and three times.
And had he not worn its wrist-strap, the whip would have dropped as sharply as his jaw.
The bridge was large and fine, high-walled to keep the heat away and paved with rough-hewn rock for a sound, safe footing. It arched out across the valley of the fiery river, a ghostly outline spanning side to side with the first wave of the whip, then taking form and solid substance in the remaining two. Prince Ivan cleared his throat in place of all the things he might have said, and finally said nothing. Burka flicked his ears again, and that tiny movement managed to express more meaning than Ivan ever could. He looked at the animal, and patted him again, raising more dust.
“I agree completely.”
It was an easily-crossed bridge, wide and comfortable for both man and beast, but Ivan refused to ride across and walked instead alongside Burka’s head. The walls were high to either side, but not high enough to keep an unseated rider from pitching over the top into a long fall from which there would be no returning. He walked, slowly and carefully and, despite the bridge’s strength, was glad to reach the other side.
It went away as swiftly as it came, vanishing like summer morning mist as he took Koshchey’s whip in his left hand and waved it thrice. Ivan coiled the long lash around its stock as he prepared to put the whip back in its place through his belt, then paused as a small frown furrowed his brow with thought. Changing hands again, he waved the whip just once and watched the first faint outline of the bridge return. He could see the fires through it, yet the structure looked deceptively solid. Ivan searched about for rocks or broken branches but without success; there was nothing on the ground save ash and finer ash. Finally he opened one of his saddle-sacks and took out half a loaf of black rye bread, making sure there was enough other food that he could spare it. Then he threw the loaf out on to the bridge.
It landed almost in the middle of the span, being somewhat stale, bounced twice. Then it simply lay where it had fallen. That wasn’t what Ivan had expected. He looked suspiciously at Koshchey’s whip, wondering what other little tricks it had in store, glanced back in annoyance at his half-loaf of bread – then gasped a small but heartfelt oath as it sank through the bridge like a hot rock through river ice and dropped into the fire. There was an insolently tiny puff of yellow flame, and it was gone as if it had never been. Ivan wondered how big a puff of flame he or Burka would have made, and guessed it wouldn’t have been much more. But he stored his discovery in his mind, and the whip in his belt, then mounted to his saddle and rode slowly onward, east and ever east.
*
The landscape changed again as Ivan rode away from the river of fire. Ash gave way to grass at last, and the world became green again. But this place wasn’t a steppe, and never had been: there were shrubs and bushes growing ever closer together in the shadow of the trees. Birch and pine, dark yew and bright maple all grew in profusion without regard for the way some trees couldn’t live in the same soil as others. Ivan cared little for that. Instead he halted Burka more than once just to sit still and enjoy the sight of something tall after an eternity of featureless steppe and ashen desert, to listen to the soft rustle of leaves and needles, to smell the scent of pine and sticky sap. It was a wholesome place, refreshing to the spirit after Koshchey’s kremlin full of death and the ashy desert that could never support a living thing.
Ivan breathed deeply in the cool, clean air and looked around him. There was enough dead wood to build a cooking-fire, and enough damp moss to build it safely. Thinking pleasant thoughts about the rich stew he could make with all the dried meat in his saddle-sack, Ivan kicked both feet from his stirrups and half-turned to slide onto the ground.
Then Burka reared back with a squeal of fright and he fell. Cushioned by the moss and the great drifts of pine-needles accumulated over many winters, Ivan bounced as though on a thick mattress, then saw what had so frightened a noble steed that had stood fast against Koshchey the Undying and the river of fire. To Burka, the huge brown bear that had risen from its sleeping-place among the bushes was a far more deadly threat than either.
As the bear woke up enough to realize there was food nearby Burka reared again, then galloped off with the bear lolloping in pursuit. Ivan scrambled to his feet and yelled, hoping to frighten the bear or to bring Burka back, but all to no avail. Hoof beats and crashing undergrowth faded away into the distance, until only the small noises of the forest remained to keep him company. He could also hear the small noises of his stomach, awakened just as much as the brown bear had been by the anticipation of some dinner – but with Burka gone, so were Ivan’s bow, his arrows, his blanket… And of course the saddle-sacks with his food and water.
All that remained of his possessions were his sword, his mace, and Koshchey the Undying’s riding-whip, none of them efficient tools for hunting. Ivan muttered something under his breath as he scrambled to his feet, then brushed off the pine-needles and the shreds of moss, turned towards the east again and began to walk.
Water he found easily enough, for there were many
small streams running through the forest, but as the afternoon ran down to evening his need for food grew steadily more keen. With a lack of hunting weapons he began to forage, content enough to eat nuts and berries, but with steadily increasing annoyance and even a sense of betrayal he soon learned the same thing that had happened to many would-be foragers whose knowledge came from stories. Although the bogatyri in the old tales never had any trouble living off the land, almost everything Ivan found was out of season, not yet ripe, or had been consumed already by whatever bird or beast had got there first.
As he travelled further into the woods and they grew thicker and darker and more tangled around him, it became plain that as sombre pine and spruce and fir replaced oak and beech, so a dense layer of harsh brown needles replaced the soil in which things grew. The occasional growths of fungus on soggy fallen treetrunks became more frequent, but they were gross, liquescent things like pallid maggots on a rotting corpse, and even if had he been sure they were safe to eat, Ivan would still have been reluctant to go near them, much less touch or actually eat a single mouthful.
With the bear in mind he climbed high into a tree as night fell, and wedged himself as best he could into a fork of branches too high up for anything heavier than himself to reach. It was uncomfortable, but it was secure. Then, with a prayer to the good God that the notion of shaking trees to find out what fell out of them should be kept from the minds of every bear and wolf in Russia, he pulled the fur of his collar up and the fur of his hat down, and between them fell into a shallow and uneasy sleep.
*
Ivan awoke to a pair of equally unpleasant realizations: the first was that he’d never been so hungry in his life, and the second was that his hip-bones had worked their way up somewhere near the back of his neck. It took him three times longer to pry himself from the tree’s embrace than it had taken to fit into it last night, and as far as swearing was concerned, he was growing bored with his own repetitions. On top of all else, he had barely slept at all.
Prince Ivan Page 21
