At the bottom of the stairs, she found a cellar. It was a long room with doors leading to other chambers, but the center of the floor directly in front of her was home to a pile of old Persian carpets and bearskin rugs flanked by three iron braziers, and on top of the mound of carpets lay an old woman with long white hair.
Nadira glanced around the space as she stepped farther in, and saw nothing of interest. No windows, no furniture, no alcoves where an enemy might be waiting to strike. She sat down on the carpets and peered at the old woman. “Wake up.”
She poked the woman. “Hey, you alive? Wake up.”
The woman didn’t move.
Nadira sighed. “Well, I can see why they left you here, at least.”
“Left?” The woman blinked and rolled her head to look at her guest. “Who are you?”
“Nadira.” She wiped her nose and sniffed violently. “I’m new around here. And you are?”
“Yaga, mother to Koschei the Deathless.”
“Oh, you’re Koschei’s mother?” Nadira smiled. “I think I met him once or twice.”
“I doubt it. He is a warrior. He does not consort with palace maids.” The white-haired woman sat up slowly.
“I’m no maid.” Nadira reached into her dress and pulled out the chain around her neck to display the little golden pendant shaped like a human heart.
Yaga plunged her own gnarled hand into her blouse and held out a matching sun-steel heart. Slowly, they both put them away.
“So,” Nadira said. “I hear you were the last ones that received Bashir’s little gift.”
“Bashir? Oh, you mean Grigori? Yes, I believe we were the last. Five hundred years ago. You?”
“Two thousand, or so.”
Yaga sneered. “Typical. He took you young and beautiful. And me? Look at this.” She waggled the loose flesh around her neck. “This, for five hundred years. Bah!”
Nadira shrugged.
“Where is everyone? Where is Wren?” Yaga asked.
“Everyone’s gone,” Nadira said. “The palace is empty. I heard them running around in the halls, and then I came out and watched them leave, scurrying like mice to get away.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. Bashir put me in a room and told me to wait for him to come back, but he didn’t, and now everyone’s gone.”
“Bashir? Ugly name. I like Grigori better. He looks like a Grigori.” Yaga glanced away and wet her lips. “He came to me the first time when I was younger, like you, and then he went away, for years, and didn’t come back again until I was like this.”
“He came back?” Nadira snorted. “He never came to see me.”
“He’s a man. You can’t expect much from a man, especially once he’s tasted you.”
Nadira blanched. “You slept with him?”
“Didn’t you?”
“No!” Nadira shivered and let the horrid thought scamper back into some dark corner of her mind, but then another thought took its place. “Is Koschei his son?”
“No, no.” Yaga cackled. “Koschei’s father was a trapper, a fur trader I found half dead in the forest near my house one winter. He died, but not before he gave me my precious Koschei.”
Nadira nodded and let a long moment of silence pass between them.
“Does it change, over time?” Yaga asked. “You said it’s been a thousand years.”
“Two thousand,” Nadira said.
“Does it change?” Yaga repeated. “The way you see time, the way you move in the world, the way you feel life and death moving around you. Does it change? Ever?”
“No.” Nadira swept a few short stray hairs behind her ear, and then started picking in her ear. “Nothing changes, ever. Things come and go. Why?”
Yaga shook her head.
“So what did he want you to do for him?” Nadira asked. “I was supposed to study aether for him. I did for a while, but I lost interest. I got tired of watching people die. I still I am, but at least I’m free to waste my time how I like now.”
“Aether.” Yaga nodded. “He asked me about aether, too. And ghosts. And death. But he never came back.”
Nadira bobbed her head and stopped digging in her ear.
“I’m tired,” Yaga said. “Tired of it all. Aren’t you?”
“I thought I was.” Nadira shrugged. “But now, I’m starting to think that I’m more bored than tired.”
“Well, I’m tired,” Yaga said. “I was too old for this when he made me immortal, and now I’m five hundred years too old for this. People aren’t supposed to live this long, to think for this long, to fill themselves up with memories and feelings and nightmares for this long.”
“But there’s no way out,” Nadira said. “The only thing that can break the pendants is another piece of sun-steel, and then you’ll lose it all, your whole soul, trapped forever.”
“Trapped?” Yaga cackled, her tiny green eyes twinkling with glee. “A soul inside the sun-steel cannot escape, but it is no different from being trapped upon this earth, or in this flesh.” She reached over and pinched Nadira on the arm. “It isn’t a prison cell where you suffer and serve for all eternity. For the most part, you sleep in darkness and silence, as peaceful as the grave. From time to time, some living person touches the sun-steel and asks for your service, so you wake up, and you answer their question, and you go back to sleep again. Didn’t you know that?”
Nadira shook her head. “Sounds boring.”
“It sounds wonderful.” Yaga sighed. “Perhaps… no, but Koschei. He needs me.”
“Koschei the Deathless needs you?” Nadira laughed. “You old fool, he’s an immortal butcher. He is death and war incarnate. He doesn’t need anyone.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“I know him well enough. I was there when the Turks shot him and chained him. I saw it. I heard it,” Nadira said, staring into the crone’s eyes. “He swore to do unspeakable things to those men. Hateful, evil things. To them, and to their mothers, and to their daughters. I’ve known many men in my time, and I can tell you exactly what sort a man is by what he says about women, and I can tell you, Yaga, that your son doesn’t need you.”
“That was just war-talk. Men spout all sorts of nonsense when they fight.” Yaga frowned, her wrinkled lips folding in upon themselves. “You’re wrong about him.”
“No, I’m not.” Nadira snorted and spat across the room. The wad of phlegm smacked against the wall in the shadows. “So if it wasn’t for Koschei, you would let Bashir kill you and take your soul into his sword?”
“I would.” Yaga hesitated. “Him, or someone like him.”
“Huh.” Nadira sighed loudly. “He wants to take me back to Alexandria with him. He said he was going to teach me some new way to live. I don’t know about that. I’m good at fighting.”
“Then why stop?”
“I don’t know. It’s not the same anymore. Or it is the same. Exactly the same. Bashir said I should see the world and see how other people live,” Nadira said.
“Or maybe, you could see the world to see how other people fight,” Yaga said. “It’s foolish to deny your nature. But it’s just as foolish to be a slave to your nature.”
Nadira pouted. “Maybe. I’ll have to think about it, I guess.”
“Think all you like,” Yaga said. “You have all the time in the world.”
Nadira nodded, and after a moment she stood up. “I think I’ll get going. It’s a big world out there. I’ve got a lot of walking to do.”
“There are faster ways to go than walking.”
“Faster, but not better.” Nadira paused at the bottom of the steps and looked back at the white-haired crone. “We probably won’t meet again. Take care of yourself.”
“And you.”
Nadira turned and started back up the steps. In her mind she tried to picture the world beyond the borders of the empire, beyond the peoples and the cities that she had known for two thousand years. She conjured up new cities, but they look
ed just like Damascus, and the people all looked like Persians, and they all fought with sabers.
She smiled.
Well, I’ll just have to see it when I get there. I wonder what Nippon is like.
She climbed to the top of the stairs and left the tower. Out in the courtyard, she paused to glance about, wondering which way led out of the palace grounds, when the droning of the airship engines suddenly grew louder and sharper. She looked up and saw the vast round nose of the first balloon come over the south wall of the palace, heading straight toward her.
The other two airships were a bit farther behind and looked to be farther out over the water, but this one was already over the wide green park and coming closer to the little white tower and the broad gravel courtyard with every passing moment.
Nadira sighed, turned toward the largest gate in sight, and started walking with her empty hands resting in the hidden pockets of her borrowed green dress. She was still walking when the bombs began to fall behind her, shaking the earth and hurling grass and gravel at her back. And she was still walking, with her hands in her pockets, when she heard the first building crumble and fall to the ground behind her.
But she didn’t look back.
Chapter 25. Slaughter
Omar jogged through the streets of Stamballa with one hand clutching his sheathed seireiken. Koschei pounded along behind him, his bare feet slapping on the cold cobblestones. Up ahead they could hear men yelling and rifles firing and swords clashing, and all of the sounds echoing and rolling over on themselves in the narrow corridors of the city streets.
Damn those idiots!
Omar turned the last corner and saw the battle raging all the way down the street to the edge of the water. Above them the roofs of nearly every house were burning brightly, the flames roared loudly, the smoke vomited upward in filthiest black, and the dying timbers cracked and collapsed left and right. Entire roofs gave way all at once and crashed into the homes, and some houses were beginning to lean downhill toward the sea.
“Stand down!” Omar yelled.
No one heard him.
Koschei barreled past with a mad bellow and leapt onto the backs of two Turks in blue. The Rus warrior sank his elbow through one man’s skull as he wrapped his other arm around a man’s neck and choked him into oblivion. Then Koschei picked up an Eranian saber in one hand and a brick in the other, and screamed.
Half the men on the street, even in the middle of swinging a blade or aiming a gun, looked up and saw the half-naked Rus barbarian roaring at them, his arm painted in blood from the elbow down.
A rifle fired and the bullet tore through Koschei’s shoulder, spraying a fine red mist into the air, but the warrior only screamed louder as he rushed down the street with his weapons raised. The saber hacked artlessly at necks and stabbed brutally at bellies while the brick smashed left and right through jawbones and eye sockets. Koschei chopped off hands and arms and ears and legs, and he crushed skulls and shattered ribs. And all the while he screamed with joy as the hot blood splashed across his face and the bodies fell to the earth in pieces all around him.
For a moment, the Turks converged on the invader, all their long Numidian rifles coming to bear on a single target. But the Hellans and Vlachian sprang on them from behind and chaos erupted in every quarter.
Within a few racing heartbeats, Omar saw the Turks plunging down the alleys and side streets, dashing away from the marines and away from the rampaging, blood-soaked monster called Koschei the Deathless. Men fell dead to the ground in pieces, dripping with blood and bile and urine and feces, and men fell writhing to the ground, shrieking like mad women and crying like frightened infants for mercy and death.
Dear God…
Omar stared. A moment ago there had been dozens of men struggling and running and grappling and shouting. Now there were piles of shredded flesh and shattered bones wrapped in blood-soaked rags. Terrified faces stared up at the sky, frozen in the instant of death. A river of human garbage trickled down the center of the street between the burning houses. And in the center of the carnage stood a bloody god of war, an ugly barbarian from the distant north who churned men into filth, and could never die.
A sharp metallic taste washed up from Omar’s stomach and burned at his teeth and tongue, and he hastily swallowed it back down.
Look on my works and despair, oh Lord, for I am thy humble servant, loyal and true, and I have made nothing but monsters and death in your name.
Forgive me.
The gunfire stopped. The yelling stopped. Only the fires went on growling and crackling as they consumed the houses and hurled bright cinders down on the men in the road.
A moment ago, these things were men, with thoughts and families and dreams and fears. And now they’re just red pieces of dirt.
Not because of humanity, or fate.
Not even because of Koschei.
Because of me.
Omar coughed on the smoke as he walked slowly and carefully down the street. His boot slipped on the blood and meat more than once, but he didn’t fall. He passed Koschei, who was busy dismembering one of the dead Turks for no apparent reason. He passed the grim-faced Vlachians and the weary young Hellans. And at the bottom of the road, just above the docks and the dark waters of the Bosporus, he found the two princes.
Radu lay on his back, his broken sword near his hand, his face still defiant and proud as he glared up at his older brother. Vlad towered over him, his burning seireiken hovering over his younger brother’s face, blinding him with its light, scorching him with its heat.
Omar ignored them both. He walked right past them to the edge of the dock, fell to his knees, and vomited into the water. His stomach churned and his throat burned and his mouth ran slick with acid and slime as his nostrils filled with the stench of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt the tears stinging him as they seeped out and ran down his cheeks.
Ysland. Vlachia. Constantia. Stamballa. And how many more that I never noticed?
How many thousands… millions more?
How many died in agony? How many live on in agony?
Four and a half thousand years… of this.
He wept and retched, and eventually he had nothing left to give to the water, and he collapsed onto his side, staring out over the Strait at the distant skyline of Constantia in silence. For a time he simply lay there on the ground, shaking, clutching his belly with one hand and his eyes with the other. But eventually the emotion receded, drawing back into whatever reservoir it had come from, leaving him empty and cold.
I am the stone cast upon still waters. See how the ripples grow as they churn life into blood and dust.
I am the stone that cast itself. I am worse than death. Death is a release. I am a plague, and they shall know me by the ruins in my wake.
Have I become the destroyer of nations? Am I a deceiver so powerful I have deceived myself into believing I am something noble?
What am I?
His mind awoke from the torment of his heart and he began to think again. He became aware of the fact that he was indeed lying on the ground and weeping in front of dozens of men, and the shame of it forced him to sit up, wipe his face, and spit away the last remnants of bile in his mouth. He got to his feet, straightened his shirt and coat, and rested his hand on his sword, all while still gazing out over the water.
He saw the two airships looming over the channel, drifting ever closer to where he stood on the shore, and he saw the third one in the distance dropping tiny black specks over the Seraglio Point, and he heard the soft thumping and crackling of the bombs bursting inside the Palace of Constantine.
Nadira… I’m so sorry.
When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw with some surprise that Radu was still alive and Vlad had stepped away and sheathed his sword. The younger brother still sat on the ground, unarmed, and both of them were staring at the Aegyptian.
Behind them, the Hellans and Vlachians had come down the street to stand just a short distance from the doc
ks to watch him in silence. Farther up the road, Koschei alone stood in the street, hurling bits of the dead Turks up onto the burning roofs and laughing like a drunkard.
Omar drew out his seireiken and the soldiers stepped back from its searing light. The old sword felt heavier than it ever had before and he nearly dropped it before he could tighten his fingers around the shark skin grip.
God forgive me.
He started to move but a flash of gold caught his eye and he paused. It was something small, something hanging out from Radu’s shirt. A little golden heart.
Omar knelt beside the prince and poked the trinket with a single finger. He whispered, “Koschei’s?”
Radu nodded.
Omar held out his hand and the wide-eyed prince yanked the chain over his head and dropped the golden heart into his palm. Omar closed his hand around it, stood up, and began walking back up the street. The soldiers parted before him, dashed back to either side to let him pass. He climbed the slope of the road, feeling for the first time how truly steep it really was, and how sharply the houses seemed to lean in order to keep their walls true and plumb.
He stepped on things. Red things, black things, blue cloth. His mind still recoiled from it, but his blood and bones had no strength left for fear or pain or misery. His body was numb and empty. He walked over the dead bodies, up and up the hill, until he stood before Koschei the Deathless.
The Rus giant grinned at him. “Grigori! There you are!”
“Yes, here I am, and God forgive me for it.” He looked up into the barbarian’s shining black eyes, and shoved his seireiken into the man’s chest. The sun-steel blade slipped in as though drenched in oil, and the man’s flesh burst into flame at the touch of the white-hot blade.
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