“It helps that I guess well,” said Ivan. “So how different is it from, from time in the real world?”
“This world or that world, not the real world. I sometimes wonder which one is truly real… As much or as little as you want, I think.”
“The way it does beneath the Elf-Hills.”
“They called such places Alfheim, half a thousand years ago,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “Is this family history?”
“Something like it. When I was very little, there was an old grandmama who told stories to the children of the court, and not just stories from the lands of the Rus. Anyway, if you go back far enough, past Ryurik the Norseman, you would find the fathers of my line among the old North people, the ones who came viking down the rivers in their longships.”
“With your colouring,” said Mar’ya Morevna, very dry, “I would never have guessed.”
“Hah,” said Ivan. His blue eyes and fair hair that turned flaxen-pale in summer made that clear enough. “Some of the stories said if a mortal man went willingly into the halls of Elfland, there would be no knowing how long he might spend there. He might think it was just overnight, but it would be ten years – or a lifetime, all his friends and family long dead and in their graves, and himself forgotten. Whatever tricks might have been played with time, they were never to his benefit. In the stories, anyway.”
“Close enough,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “Except for the unpleasantness. Or rather…let me say instead, unpleasantness exists – I’ve seen that for myself – but only if you don’t know what you’re doing. I know exactly what I’m doing, and last night I was getting a good night’s sleep after a good day’s work. I created that still place for myself, and the cares of the world have no part of it.”
Ivan gazed at her for a long time, then smiled a little. “I can’t help thinking it sounds like you’re cheating, somehow. Not that I mind, you understand. From what you’ve tried to instruct me about magic, effort’s often out of all proportion to the reward. It’s pleasant to find that there’s at least one spell which works the other way. And now I start to see why you never seemed tired when you were working hard. But why not at other times?”
“It’s hardly proper to use the extraordinary when the commonplace is good enough.”
“Just so. But, loved, I keep remembering how many times you’ve told me that all the Gating spells are dangerous. I would never dare command you to stop doing this—”
“Good.”
“—But as you said to me, please be careful.”
“Oh, I will be. I am.” Mar’ya Morevna looked thoughtful. “Just because I don’t use those spells for getting from one place to another doesn’t mean every other sorcerer is as cautious. That’s another reason the Gates worry me. They can’t be seen except by whoever created them – at least, not without vast trouble. Of course, they can be Seen.” She gave the word an odd twist, a definite emphasis that confirmed the presence of the capital letter. “But maintaining that particular enchantment is an exhausting process. It can kill.”
“There’s too much about sorcery that can kill, or maim, or cripple.”
“My own dear love,” said Mar’ya Morevna, “that’s what makes the Art Magic so interesting.”
She smiled, and Ivan returned it weakly. He’d long since given up trying to work out how a woman who looked so beautiful could also look so wolfish, and suspected long hours of practice in a mirror. Mother Wolf could do it even better, but then Mother Wolf had a natural advantage. Prince Ivan smiled inwardly at the thought of what comments she would make about such a cumbersome attempt at humour. Then, much less amused, he found himself wondering how, with all this frantic galloping to and fro across Moist-Mother-Earth, the Wolf’s son was supposed to present himself and offer service.
“He’ll doubtless have his own way of doing things,” said Mar’ya Morevna when he asked. “Just like his mother. But if he’s hoping to find us in this kremlin, he had best move quickly.”
“Oh God, not again,” said Ivan, sagging slightly as all the pleasant relaxation he was feeling went away. “I hoped we might have had a few more hours of sitting still.”
“That wasn’t a hope.” Mar’ya Morevna squared the edges of the stack of manuscript and gave its securing web of ribbon a tug to tighten it. “It was a dream. Dream on if you like, but be ready to leave in an hour.”
“I’d at least like to take a bath.”
“I know the way you take a bath, my loved. We’ll leave in two hours, but no more.”
“Are we trying to match some fortunate conjunction of the stars?” That at least would make some sense from all the haste, though Ivan might have expected more warning. Unlike Mar’ya Morevna’s notions, stellar events took time.
“Conjunction? No. I’m just in a hurry. And these are all the spells and charms I think we’ll need.” She dropped the sheaf of manuscript into a slim metal case whose lock was almost as bulky as the lid it secured.
“All?”
“Probably. More to the point, I found the spell we need to go between the worlds, slowly. It isn’t a Gate spell, and it doesn’t rely on the horses. We’ll be able to go East of the Sun and West of the Moon almost as easily as your brother-in-law the Raven, and with much less noise.”
Ivan compared the thunderous arrival of Mikhail Voronov in Raven’s shape with the thunderous arrival of Mar’ya Morevna and himself on the two horses out in the stable and found very little difference between them, but pointing that out might not be wise.
“How do we do it?” he asked instead.
Mar’ya Morevna stood up and tucked the case of copied spells under one arm. “More easily shown than told. Go take your bath and meet me in the courtyard. And Vanya, dress for summer.”
There was more than a foot of snow on the sills of the library windows, and the glass that had survived their arrival was fern-patterned with frost. Ivan looked at the raging depths of winter just outside and echoed ‘Dress for summer?’ in a tone that could have meant almost anything, then went quickly off in search of soap, hot water and lots and lots of steam.
*
When Ivan eventually reached the courtyard, he was still glowing from the effects of a steam-bath taken as leisurely as he reasonably could. It was just as well: the winter wind was slashing around the kremlin towers, and the snow it carried struck exposed skin like a handful of dagger blades. Even the heavy cloak that someone wrapped around him was of little help against such a cold, and it bit through the summer clothes he wore underneath as if the garments weren’t even there.
Mar’ya Morevna had been busy, although Ivan was quite willing to believe she had been wearing something a lot heavier than silk and velvet while she was doing it. The snow in the open courtyard was deep, nearly three feet in the drifted places by the walls where there had been no need to brush it away, and already four inches or so had sifted over places the servants’ brooms had cleared less than an hour before. It had stayed there, by Mar’ya Morevna’s instruction, so she could use its clean white surface as a page on which to draw her patterns of force.
The lines of the diagram were incised right down to the flagstones, and where those lines had been drawn with spellstave, with stylus and with naked hand, they remained unmarred by the freshly fallen snow. Some looked familiar, like the simple circles Ivan had been taught to draw, but others were so convoluted that even trying to follow them with an eye and a pointing finger was impossible. Some of the sweeping curves appeared to descend through the snow then through the stones beneath, and there were angles which seemed to fade from sight not just from delicacy of touch when they were drawn, but because they ran beyond the boundaries of the world and simply ceased to exist.
“East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” said Mar’ya Morevna cheerfully, smacking powdered snow off her sleeves and seeming not to feel the weather on a day when, for all the sign of it through the scudding layers of grey cloud, the sun might have been no more than a happy dream from some warmer world. “As far away as yesterday, a
s close as the other side of your own shadow.” She waved one hand towards the complicated pattern covering the courtyard, and at half a dozen sections of it that were much more than just lines drawn in snow. “And as the conjurers like to say, it’s all done with mirrors.”
They were mirrors indeed, almost as tall as a man and half as wide, and Ivan didn’t even trouble himself with wondering why the wind hadn’t blown them down. If keeping blizzard-driven snow out of a line drawn on a drift hadn’t troubled Mar’ya Morevna, then making sure that six times sixty pounds of silvered glass stayed in its place wasn’t likely to be a problem. Ivan looked at one of the mirrors, and his reflection looked back out of it. Neither the real Prince nor the reflected one looked very happy, and the glow of bathing had all but been extinguished by the wind.
“Whose clever idea was this?” rumbled a basso voice at Ivan’s elbow, so suddenly that he jumped. The snow was already deep enough to muffle the sound of hoofs, even those of a horse as big as Sivka. Under his horse-blanket the black stallion was already saddled and bridled, tricked out with saddlebags, bowcase and quiver, a mace hung from the pommel and a bedroll strapped across the cantle. He looked from Prince Ivan to the swirling lines of the spell-pattern, and put his ears flat back in silent comment.
“Guess,” said Ivan, jerking his head towards where Mar’ya Morevna was giving final instructions to her steward.
Sivka glanced that way, scraped at the frozen ground with one fore-hoof and stamped. “That’s all right then. If it had been you, dear little master,” – his great eyes glittered with wicked amusement as he tossed his mane to dislodge a build-up of snow – “then I might have been more concerned. The lady, your wife, knows her business.”
“Very droll,” said Ivan. “Very humorous. And what do you know about this world beyond the world?”
“A little. It’s a pleasant place. Warm. Green. Soft underfoot. Some people call it the Summer Country, though that’s an old name for where the dead went before the White Christ invented Heaven. This is East of the Sun and West of the Moon. If it really is the Summer Country, or if it has another name, no one has told me. I know these places better to travel through than to visit, if you take my meaning.”
“Yes, I do. But this time, we’re visiting.”
“Then be honest while you’re there, little master. Always tell the truth.”
“I try to do that anyway. Why more so this time?”
“Because what you say will be the truth,” said Mar’ya Morevna as she walked over. “The good horse is right. If you claimed to be someone other than Ivan Aleksandrovich the Prince of Khorlov, you would cease to be Ivan Aleksandrovich.”
“Then who – or what – would I be?”
“Alive, dead, someone else…Who knows? You would have to try it before you could say for sure.”
“Thank you, no.”
“Lady and little master, if I may venture an opinion: could this discussion be continued somewhere warmer?” There was a crust of frost beginning to form over the polished steel that decorated Sivka’s harness, and the big horse contrived to look as miserable as he could.
Mar’ya Morevna laughed shortly and beckoned Chyornyy closer, then swung up into the saddle. “Told my business by a horse,” she said.
“Not by me, mistress,” said Chyornyy, and if Sivka’s stable-brother sounded rather pious, it was probably only by comparison.
Ivan mounted up, settled into the saddle and then gasped and stood up in his stirrups as its leather struck chill right through his summer-weight riding breeches. Mar’ya Morevna looked at him and laughed at his rueful expression, then signalled to the servants standing beside each of the mirrors.
One by one the heavy sheets of glass were shifted into alignment with marks made in the snow, and the reflections of the snow-laden courtyard became reflections of themselves. As the images bounced to and fro between the mirrors each became smaller and smaller, diminishing out towards infinity. Then the final mirror took its place in the spell-pattern and the courtyard and the horses and the snow all went away. Instead, caught within the frame of that last mirror as though it was a suddenly opened window set in an unseen wall, Ivan could see a land of green rolling hills and blue sky, of birch trees and silent rivers.
“Stay close by me,” said Mar’ya Morevna, sidling Chyornyy in so they were knee to knee as if for a close-order cavalry charge. “Now ride slowly into the reflection. Slowly, and close. Slowly, and close…”
Even though Ivan wasn’t quite sure how he, Sivka, Chyornyy and Mar’ya Morevna were supposed to fit all together and all at once through a space barely enough for himself on foot, the black horse beneath him knew. Advancing at a stately pace, Sivka walked straight towards the mirror – or the window, or the Gate, or the gilt-framed hole that had just opened in the fabric of this reality and out the other side.
And through it.
*
The snow-laden wind blew through where they had been, in a kremlin courtyard suddenly much colder after that brief glimpse of summer. The servants stared at the empty glass of the last mirror, then as High Steward Fedor Konstantinovich clapped his hands they set about tidying up.
All except one, who had watched unseen from the shadows of the kitchen doorway.
Gottfried Kuchmann had been a Schwyzer mercenary guarding the priests of the Holy Inquisition. Now he was a Swiss pastry-cook in the kitchen of Mar’ya Morevna’s kremlin. He had been many other things in his time with the Teutonic Order, but never a sorcerer until this moment, when he used flour to draw a pattern on the flagstone floor of the furthest and most deserted pantry.
Kuchmann laid a letter at the centre of it and then, with carefully-learned words spoken in a trembling voice, he activated the Gating spell. The parchment faded to translucence and, for an instant before the letter disappeared entirely, Kuchmann could see his own words as if written on glass. They ran together three layers deep and made no sense, but the letter’s salutation remained plain enough.
It was addressed to Dieter Balke.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Summer Country
A blackbird burst from underneath a flower-laden tangle of wild raspberry bushes, screaming his alarm call as he fled in a streak of sable. A few minutes later, his panic forgotten, the blackbird dug his yellow bill into the ground near where two huge black horses had appeared from nowhere, watching them warily from one gold-rimmed eye even as he reaped the benefit of their heavy hoofs in the shape of startled bugs. Two butterflies fluttered in their usual haphazard way through the shafts of dusty sunlight that struck down between the trees, and one settled for a moment between the larger horse’s ears.
Prince Ivan looked at the butterfly, at the blackbird, and most of all at the sunlight. A moment ago, barely a heartbeat past, a wind straight from Siberia had been slicing the meat from his bones, but now the warmth of high summer in the deep forest soaked through his clothing to drive the chill away. Like all the people of the Rus, Ivan endured but didn’t enjoy the winter, and to have left it behind was a luxury beyond price. He laughed aloud and in those surroundings the sound seemed very right and proper. “So this is the Summer Country,” he said to nobody in particular. “I like it!”
The forests were alive with birdsong, more even than the noisiest springs and summers that Ivan had heard. Whatever birds might sing for in the real world, finding a mate, proclaiming a territory, warning of enemies, here they seemed also to sing for the joy of it.
“A man could spend his winters here quite happily,” Ivan said, “and return to the Rus lands only for the summer there.”
Mar’ya Morevna seemed to have been expecting such a comment. “I think not,” she said. “When we go home again, I’ll go back to the kremlin library and—”
“I know,” said Ivan, and leaned over to pat her hand. “You’ll show me books explaining in exhaustive detail why not. And what are the books going to tell me that you can’t? That the Summer Country’s prohibited to mortals? Or that we can’t
spend more than a certain time in it?”
“Almost right on both counts, but almost wrong as well.” Ivan gave her a quizzical look. “You were too subtle, dear heart. It’s much simpler than that. Spend any longer here than the waxing and the waning of a moon, and by the dark of that moon you can’t return to the lands of the Rus and live.”
“Is it so dangerous?”
“As dangerous as water. We can drink it, cook in it, even swim in it if the mood moves us, and you know how pleasant a deep hot bath can be. But as soon as we try to breathe it…” Mar’ya Morevna drew an eloquent finger across her throat. “Unless we become something which can live in it. And when that happens, bid goodbye to home, whether it’s dry land or the lands of the Rus.”
“But what about those stories – are they just stories and nothing more?”
“What stories?”
“The ones where men and women spend years in… In what sounds very like this Summer Country, and return to find that no time has passed at home. Or when they spend what seems just a night, but it’s a hundred years, and they die of old age. I thought it was what happened when people tampered with a Gating spell, but the tales always mention a country of some sort.”
“Ivan, think again. Take away all of the embroidery, and what do those stories say?”
He looked at her for a moment, then quirked his mouth in annoyance at himself for not seeing it sooner. “They went to a place that wasn’t theirs and stayed too long, and when they came home again....” He grimaced as the thought extended further. “No, they couldn’t come home. They had changed, home was that other place, and when they left it they died.”
“The Summer Country’s safe to visit,” said Mar’ya Morevna softly, “and safe to admire. But if you decide to live here, you live here for always. There’s no going back. Some have made that choice, but... To never see friends or family again? I don’t know if I could. Could you?”
Ivan stood up in his stirrups to see over the undergrowth and between the crowding tree-trunks of silver birch and gnarly oak, of lime and beech, and here and there of dark yew. There was a fine sweeping range of hills just visible beyond the forest, glowing under the sun.
Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 20
