The Girl in the Tower

by Katherine Arden

  The musty reek of old bearskin warned him, and then a sword came at Sasha’s head out of the near-dark of the staircase. He blocked it with a teeth-grinding jar and a shower of sparks. One of Kasyan’s men. Sasha did not try to engage him, only ducked the second stroke, dodged past the man, booted him down the stairs, and kept running.

  A door stood ajar; he darted into the first anteroom. No one. Only attendants lying dead, guards with their throats slit.

  Higher in the palace, Sasha thought he heard Dmitrii cry out. The light from the dooryard glowed suddenly bright in the slitted windows. Sasha ran on, praying incoherently.

  Here was the receiving-room, silent and still, except that the door behind the throne stood ajar and from behind it came the crash of blades and a yellow flicker of firelight.

  Sasha ran through. Dmitrii Ivanovich was there, unaided except for a single living guard. Four men with curving swords opposed them. Three attendants, who had been unarmed, and four more guards, whose weapons had not done enough, lay dead on the floor.

  As Sasha watched, the Grand Prince’s last guard went down with a sword-hilt to the face. Dmitrii killed the attacker and backed up, teeth bared.

  The eyes of the prince and the monk met for the briefest instant.

  Then Sasha threw his sword. It went end over end and clean through the leather-armored back of one of the invaders. Dmitrii blocked the stroke of the second man, riposted with his sword in a flat arc that took his opponent’s head off.

  Sasha ran forward, scooping up a dead man’s blade, and then it was hot, close battle, two against two, until eventually the interlopers fell, spitting blood.

  A sudden, heaving silence.

  The cousins looked at each other.

  “Whose are they?” Dmitrii asked, with a look at the dead men.

  “Kasyan’s,” said Sasha.

  “I thought I recognized this one,” said Dmitrii, prodding one with the flat of his sword. There was blood on his nose and knuckles; his barrel chest heaved for air. Shouting came up from the guardrooms below; a greater shouting from the dooryard outside. Then a rending crash.

  “Dmitrii Ivanovich,” said Sasha. “I beg you will forgive me.”

  He wondered if the Grand Prince would kill him here in the shadows.

  “Why did you lie to me?” asked Dmitrii.

  “For my sister’s virtue,” said Sasha. “And then for her courage.”

  Dmitrii held his serpent-headed sword, naked and bloody, in one broad hand. “Will you ever lie to me again?” he asked.

  “No,” said Sasha. “I swear it.”

  Dmitrii sighed, as though a bitter burden had fallen away. “Then I forgive you.”

  Another crash from the dooryard, screams, and a sudden flaring of firelight. “What is happening?” Dmitrii asked.

  “Kasyan Lutovich means to make himself Grand Prince,” said Sasha.

  Dmitrii smiled at that, slow and grim. “Then I will kill him,” he said very simply. “Come with me, cousin.”

  Sasha nodded, and the two went down to the battle below.

  VASYA WRENCHED ROUND. Her brother stood at the top of the staircase, on the landing where it split to go up either to the terem or to the audience-chambers. The screen on the steps had been torn away. Next moment the Grand Prince of Moscow, nose and knuckles bleeding, came out of the darkness above, alive, on his feet, holding a bloody sword. For an instant, Dmitrii looked at Sasha, his face full of love and unforgotten anger. Then he raised his voice and stood shoulder to shoulder with his cousin. “Rise, men of God!” he shouted. “Fear nothing!”

  The battle paused for a moment, as though the world listened. Then Dmitrii and Sasha, as one, rushed, shouting down the steps. They ran past Vasya, not sparing her a glance, and then out into the dooryard.

  And their cry was answered. For Brother Rodion strode now through the ruins of the main gate, his ax in his hand, and he was not alone. Behind and beside him ranged a motley collection of monks and townsmen and warriors—the kremlin gate-guard.

  Rodion’s newcomers recoiled when he entered the dooryard. The dead things gibbered and began to advance toward the new threat. Chelubey knew his work; he split his force smoothly to counter Dmitrii and Sasha on the one side, Rodion on the other. The battle wavered on a knife-edge.

  Sasha was still shoulder to shoulder with Dmitrii, and the gray eyes of each were violet with strange fire.

  “Do not be afraid,” Sasha called again. He stabbed one man, dodged the stroke of another. “People of God, do not be afraid.”

  Chelubey looked annoyed now, snapping quick orders. Bows came to bear on the Grand Prince. The Russian men-at-arms blinked like men wakened from nightmares. Dmitrii beheaded one of Kasyan’s men, kicked the body down, and called, “What are devils to men of faith?”

  Chelubey coolly set an arrow to his string, sighting on Dmitrii. But Sasha thrust the Grand Prince aside and took the arrow in the meat of his upper arm. He grunted; Vasya cried out in protest.

  Dmitrii caught his cousin. The broad-headed arrow had pierced the monk’s upper arm. The men wavered again. The red light strengthened. More arrows flew. One stirred the Grand Prince’s cap. But Sasha shook Dmitrii off and forced himself to his feet, his face set against the pain. He yanked the shaft out, switched his sword to his shield-hand. “Rise, men of God!”

  Rodion roared out a war-cry, swinging his ax. Some of the men seized the loose horses and leaped to their backs, and the battle was furiously, finally, joined.

  “Solovey,” said Vasya. “I must go up into the tower. I must go after Masha and Kasyan. Go—I beg you will help my brother. Protect him. Protect Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

  Solovey flattened his ears. You cannot just—

  But she had already put a hand on the stallion’s nose and then raced up into the darkness.

  BEFORE HER ROSE THE ENCLOSED STAIRS that would take her into the upper reaches of the Grand Prince’s palace, with the fine screen-work all gashed and broken. Vasya paused on the landing where the staircase split, where Sasha had called down. She looked back. Dmitrii was riding one of the horses from the burning stable. Her brother had sprung to Solovey’s reluctant back: man of God riding a horse of the older, pagan world.

  Solovey reared, and Sasha’s sword swept down. Vasya breathed a prayer for them and looked up instead. Bodies lay crumpled on the left-hand staircase, the way to the prince’s antechamber. But on the way to the terem lay only an unnatural blackness.

  Vasya turned right and ran into the dark, holding the image of her horse and her brother in her mind like a talisman.

  Ten steps. Twenty. Up and up.

  How long did the stairs go on? She should have reached the top by now.

  A scraping step came from above. Vasya jerked to a halt. A figure like a man lurched toward her, groping blindly, on legs ill-jointed as a doll’s.

  The man came closer, and Vasya recognized him.

  “Father,” cried Vasya, unthinking. “Father, is it you?” It was like her father but not; his face, but empty-eyed, body crushed and misshapen from the blow that had killed him.

  Pyotr came closer. He turned a flat and gleaming eye toward her.

  “Father, forgive me—” Vasya reached out.

  Then there was no father at all, only the darkness, full of the beating firelight. She could no longer hear the battle below. She paused while her heart thundered in her ears. How long was this stair? Vasya started up again. Her breath came short; her legs burned.

  A thud on the stairs above. Then another. Footsteps. Her feet stumbled and her breathing whined in her ears. There—coming out of the darkness above them—that was her brother Alyosha, with his gray eyes, so like their father’s. But he had no throat, no throat at all and no jaw. It had all been torn away, and she thought she saw the marks of teeth in the shreds of remaining skin. An upyr had been at him, or worse, and he had died…

  The phantom tried to speak; she saw the bloody ruin working. But nothing came out save gobbling sounds and
bits of flesh. But still there were those eyes, cool and gray, looking at her sadly.

  Vasya, weeping now, ran past this creature and kept on.

  Next she saw a little group on the stairs above; three men standing over a huddled heap, their faces lit with red.

  Vasya realized that the heap was Irina, her sister. Irina’s face was bruised, her skirts a mass of blood. She threw herself at the men with an inarticulate snarl, but they disappeared. Only her dead sister remained. Then she was gone, too, and there was only oily darkness.

  Vasya swallowed another sob and ran on, stumbling over the steps. Now an enormous bulk lay in front of her, sprawled head-down. As Vasya ran toward it, she saw that it was Solovey lying on his side, with an arrow buried to the feathers in his wise, dark eye.

  Was it real? Not? Both? When would it end? How long could the stairs go on? Vasya was sprinting up now, her courage all forgotten; there were only the steps, her terror, her pounding heart. She could think of nothing but escape, but the stairs went on and she would run up forever, watching everything she feared most play out before her.

  Another figure appeared, this one old and bent and veiled. When it raised a rheumy gaze to Vasya’s face, she recognized her own eyes.

  Vasya stopped. She barely breathed. This was the face of her most dreadful dream: herself, imprisoned behind walls until she grew to accept them, her soul withered away. She was trapped in a tower, just like this nightmare Vasilisa; she would never get out until she was old and broken, until madness claimed her…

  But even as the thought formed, Vasya quelled it.

  “No,” she said savagely, almost spitting in the illusion’s face. “I chose death in the winter forest once, rather than wear your face. I’d choose it again. You are nothing; only a shadow, meant to frighten me.”

  She tried to push past. But the woman did not move, or disappear. “Wait,” it hissed.

  Vasya stilled, and looked again at the worn face. Then she understood. “You are the ghost from the tower.”

  The ghost nodded. “I saw—the priest take Marya,” she breathed. “I followed. I had not left the tower since—but I followed. I can do nothing—but I followed. For the child.” Was that grief in the ghost’s face? Bitterness? The ghost’s throat worked. “Go—inside,” she said. “The door is there.” She laid a quivering hand on what appeared to be blank wall. “Save her.”

  “Thank you—I am sorry,” Vasya whispered. Sorry for the tower and the walls, and this woman’s—whoever she was—long torment. “I will free you if I can.”

  The ghost only shook her head, and stepped aside. Vasya realized that to her left there was a door. She pushed it open and went inside.

  SHE STOOD IN A magnificent room. A low fire burned in the stove. The light fingered the innumerable silks and golden things that enriched that place, idly, like a prince surfeited with excess. The floor was thick with black pelts. Ornaments hung on the walls, and everywhere were cushions and chests and tables of black and silken wood. The stove was covered with tiles painted with flames and flowers, fruits and bright-winged birds.

  Marya sat on a bench beside the stove, eating cakes with abandon. She bit, chewed, and swallowed vigorously, but her eyes were dull. She wore the heavy golden necklace that Kasyan had tried to put on Vasya. Her back bowed with the weight. The stone on the necklace glowed a violent red.

  In a chair sat Kaschei the Deathless. In that light, his hair glittered black against his pale neck. He wore every finery that money could contrive: cloth-of-silver, embroidered with strange flowers; silk, velvet, brocade; things that Vasya didn’t have a name for. His mouth was a smiling gash in his short beard. Triumph shone from his eyes.

  Vasya, sickened, shut the door behind her and stood silent.

  “Well met, Vasya,” Kasyan said. A small, fierce smile curled his mouth. “Took you long enough. Did my creatures entertain you?” He looked younger somehow: young as she, smooth-skinned like a full-fed tick. “Chelubey is coming. Will you watch my coronation, after I throw down Dmitrii Ivanovich?”

  “I have come for my niece,” said Vasya. What was real, here in this shining chamber? She could feel the illusions hovering.

  Masha sat oblivious beside the oven, shoveling the cakes into her mouth.

  “Have you?” Kasyan said drily. “Only for the child? Not my company? You wound me. Tell me why should I not kill you where you stand, Vasilisa Petrovna.”

  Vasya stepped closer. “Do you really want me dead?”

  He snorted, though his eyes darted once over her face and hair and throat. “Are you offering yourself in exchange for this maiden? Unoriginal. Besides you are only a bony creature—the slave of a frost-demon—and too ugly to wed. This child, on the other hand…” He ran an indolent hand over Marya’s cheek. “She is so strong. Didn’t you see my illusions in the dooryard and on the stair?”

  Vasya’s furious breath came short and she took a stride forward. “I broke his jewel. I am not his slave. Let the child go. I will stay in her place.”

  “Will you?” he asked. “I think not.” His lips had a fat, hungry curve. The red light at his hands glowed brighter, drawing her gaze…and then his doubled fist in her stomach knocked her wheezing to the ground. He had closed the distance between them, and she had not seen him come.

  Vasya lay in a ball of pain, arms around her ribs.

  “You think you could offer me anything?” he hissed into her face, showering her with spit. “After your little rat-creature cost my people their surprise? After you freed my horse? You ugly fool, how much do you think you are worth?”

  He kicked her in the stomach. Her ribs cracked. Blackness exploded across her vision. He raised a hand, limned with red light. Then the light became blood-colored flames wrapping his fingers. She could smell the fire. Somewhere behind him, Marya gave a thin, pained cry.

  He bent nearer, put the burning hand almost onto her face. “Who do you think you are, compared to me?”

  “Morozko spoke true,” Vasya whispered, unable to take her eyes off the flames. “You are a sorcerer. Kaschei the Deathless.”

  Kasyan’s answering smile had an edge of grimy secrets, of lightless years, of famine, and terror, and endless, gnawing hunger. The fire in his hand went blue, then vanished. “My name is Kasyan Lutovich,” he said. “The other is a foolish nickname. I was a little thin creature as a child, you know, and so they nicknamed me for my bones. Now I am the Grand Prince of Moscow.” He straightened up, looked down at her, and laughed suddenly. “A poor champion, you,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come. You won’t be my wife. I’ve changed my mind. I will keep Masha for that, and you may be my slave. I will break you slowly.”

  Vasya didn’t answer. Her vision still sparked red-black with pain.

  Kasyan bent down and gripped her hard by the back of her neck. He put his other forefinger to where her tears pooled just at the corner of her eyes. His hands were cold as death. “Perhaps you don’t need to see at all,” he whispered. He tapped her eyelid with a long-nailed hand. “I would like that; you an eyeless drudge in my Tower of Bones.”

  Vasya’s breathing snarled in her throat. Behind him, Marya had left off her cakes, and she was watching them with a dull, incurious expression.

  Suddenly Kasyan’s head jerked up. “No,” he said.

  Vasya, shivering, her cracked ribs afire, rolled over to follow his gaze.

  There stood the ghost—the ghost of the staircase, the ghost from her sister’s tower. The scanty hair streamed, the loose-lipped mouth gaped on emptiness. She was bent as though with pain. But she spoke. “Don’t touch her,” the ghost said.

  “Tamara,” Kasyan said. Vasya stiffened in surprise. “Go back outside. Go back to your tower; that is where you belong.”

  “I will not,” croaked the ghost. She stepped forward.

  Kasyan recoiled, staring. Sweat sprang out on his forehead. “Don’t look at me that way. I never hurt you—no, never.”

  The ghost glanced at Vasya, urgently, and
then moved toward Kasyan, drawing his eyes.

  “Are you afraid?” the ghost whispered, a parody of intimacy. “You were always afraid. You feared my mother’s horses. I had to catch yours for you—put your bridle on the mare’s head—do you remember? I loved you in those days; I would do just as you said.”

  “Be silent!” he hissed. “You should not be here. You cannot be here. I set you apart from me.”

  Ghost and sorcerer were staring at each other with mingled rage and hunger and bitter loss. “No,” breathed the ghost. “That is not how it was. You wanted to keep me. I fled. I came to Moscow and went into Ivan’s tower, where you could not follow.” One bony hand went to her throat. “Even then, I could never be free of you. But my daughter—she died free. Beloved. I won that much.”

  Tamara, Vasya thought.

  Grandmother.

  While the ghost whispered, Vasya had crept to where Marya sat silent beside the stove, still eating, not looking up. Tears had made tracks in the child’s dirty face. Vasya tried pulling her toward the door. But Marya only sat stiff, dull-eyed. Vasya’s cracked ribs burned with the effort.

  A heavy step and a whiff of perfumed oil warned her, but she did not turn in time. Kasyan seized Vasya from behind and wrenched her arm up, so that she choked back a scream. The sorcerer spoke into her ear. “You think you can trick me?” he hissed. “A girl, a ghost, and a child? I don’t care what witch bore you all; I am master.”

  “Marya Vladimirovna,” said the ghost in her strange, blurred voice. “Look at me.”

  Marya’s head slowly rose, her eyes slowly opened.

  She saw the ghost.

  She screamed, a raw, child’s wail of terror. Kasyan’s gaze shifted toward the girl for just a moment and Vasya reached back, ribs aching, and seized Kasyan’s knife—her knife, where it hung from his belt. She tried to stab him. He recoiled, and she missed, but his grip on her arm weakened.