by Sarah Zettel
“Do we go far?” he asked, taking care not to look at the Vixen. He must be cautious now, and more than cautious. This was her world he walked in.
The Vixen laughed lightly, and squeezed his hand. “Do you not know better than to ask distances here, sorcerer?” He heard the smile in her voice, and, unwillingly, he pictured it on her face. It was illusion, that face, he knew that, but it was nonetheless most beautiful.
“You will not look at me, sorcerer,” said the Vixen. “Why not?”
Kalami found his mouth was dry. His blood warmed within him, heated only by the thought of her face, and the touch of her hand, and that scent which lingered between them.
“I have no wish to look upon a lie, madame,” he made himself say.
Again the Vixen laughed. It was musical sound, the sound the river should have been making. “Is it a lie?” She pressed in more closely against him, pulling his arm near. Despite his thick coat, he felt the curve of her body, just below the swell of her breast, and became suddenly very aware of his own breathing, and the gentle pounding of his heart. “We are beyond lies here, and truth. Here, there can be only reality.”
“And how is reality different from the truth?”
“The truth is an idea you mortals conceived of to convince yourselves that you knew what was real.” She stopped. Kalami also stopped, keeping his eyes rigidly forward. He felt her lift her hand from his, and for a moment knew relief, until that hand brushed his bare cheek, its delicate fingers tracing his jawline.
“Look at me, sorcerer.”
Kalami closed his eyes. His throat was tight now. He wanted to look at her, he wanted to take that hand that now touched his neck finding its way under the silken scarf, that glided slowly down the shoulder, so that he felt its touch as if it drew itself down his naked skin. He wanted to pull her close and find out how her mouth would feel against his. He imagined her kisses would be rich and heady, like red wine, all unwatered.
“Tush, sorcerer, such control when there is no need.” Her hand circled his waist, just briefly. She was so close, he could feel the warmth of her against every pore, smell her breath, which was the source of her scent. Her touch tingled against his skin, like snowflakes. “Why will you not take what is offered to you?”
He did not know where he was. If she chose to leave him here, he might wander lost in the Silent Lands until his flesh could no longer sustain him. At best, he could follow the river, if she chose to leave him here. “Because,” he said, “nothing you offer is freely given, and I have nothing with which to repay your favor.”
She laughed again, and her fingers touched his mouth. “But you have no idea what I want.”
Her arms darted around his shoulders. She kissed him and the sensation was as strong, as heady as he had imagined it would be. He kissed her back and grappled with her, his hands as hungry as his mouth to touch her, to claim all this power, all this desire, if only for this one instant. He fumbled with his pack, casting it aside. Laughing, she fell backward and he did nothing to stop them tumbling onto the moss and stones of the riverbank. He wanted only to touch her, to feel breast and buttock and thigh, to shove the fur robe she wore up until it was no longer an impediment.
Coat, gloves, boots, all were gone and he neither knew or cared how it came to be so. She was all heat and he shivered with the thought that her very touch might burn him, like the touch of the Firebird might when he had the cage and knew how to keep it whole. Such strength, such power. She wrapped her legs around him and drew him down again, and again, her eyes as green and glowing as her sons’ had been when as they thought about taking Ananda from her escort. The tumult of sensations, of her fingers digging into his flesh, of her eyes, of her heat, swirled around his head mixed with memory and ecstasy and fear and need until he no longer knew his own thoughts. He only knew that in this one moment he lived, and he held to him all the power he had ever desired. When at last she arched underneath him, the pitch of her need drowning him completely, he shouted out as if to make all the Silent Lands ring with the release of his passions.
He did not know how long they lay together afterward, but it was she who roused them.
“Arrange your clothing, sorcerer,” she said, with only the barest hint of teasing heat left in her voice. “We must have you out of the Silent Lands before Grandfather Death comes here in search of you.”
Kalami did as he was told, retrieving his abandoned clothes and pack. When they began to walk again, the Vixen made no move to take his hand. He did not consider this odd. She was sated, as was he. Perhaps later he would pay for what he had done, and perhaps it would prove to be weakness, but he would deal with that in the future, as he had dealt with every other obstacle that had come into his path, whether it was an empress or the witch Baba Yaga. Nothing could now stop him.
The Vixen halted. “I can go no further. Step into the water, sorcerer, walk with the current. You will arrive where you wish to be.”
“You have my thanks, madame.”
The gaze she returned was cool and speculative. “I have all that I need from you.” She smiled again, a satisfied smile, and brushed past him, allowing him to feel just the barest touch of her skin against his, and then she was a fox again, trotting into the shadows of the trees, and was lost to his sight within minutes.
Kalami still did not know where he was, nor where he would arrive, but even the Vixen had to acknowledge the bonds of promise, and now there was the additional bond between them. In this, at least, she would not deceive him.
Kalami stepped into the river, which did not wet his boots, even though he felt the tug and swirl of its current. He strode forward, heedless of the stones that shifted underfoot. These things might be real, but they were not true, and despite the Vixen’s riddles, it was truth that mattered in the navigation of the Land of Death and Spirit.
After a very few moments, it was as if Kalami stepped through a door, and he was inside. It took him only a heartbeat to recognize the pale walls and the chipped wooden floor with its rag rug. This was the lighthouse, Bridget’s lighthouse. In Bridget’s favorite chair sat Medeoan, or rather slumped Medeoan. The room was as cold as winter stone and the long rays of the setting sun turned the snow outside scarlet and magenta. The wind blew uninterrupted through the room, but the stove in the corner stood dark and lifeless.
“Kalami?” The dowager stirred weakly. “No. I am dreaming.”
Kalami ignored her. Instead, he knelt beside the cage she had placed underneath the window. This could not be the Firebird. This was a puny, pale thing, cowering at the bottom of its cage, and fluffing its brassy feathers for what little warmth they could give it. It glared at him with dim blue eyes and shoved its beak forward so that he saw the pink and naked flesh of its neck. It looked like a baby bird, not yet fully fledged. The beak snapped feebly at him, opening and closing, but no sound came forth. Cautiously, Kalami raised his hand and touched the bars of the cage. They were cold, as cold as the stove, as cold as the wind that blew through the room.
Kalami saw at once what Medeoan was doing. Here, so far from flame and magic, the cold and death of winter would take the Firebird’s life. Medeoan knew she must die soon, and that her death would release the Firebird, as her living blood had kept it caged. By bringing them both here to their end, she would keep Isavalta safe from the creature’s certain wrath.
“So, this late you have decided to make Vyshemir’s sacrifice after all. You would choose your death and the Firebird’s destruction rather than share your secrets with me.” He spoke the words aloud, not caring if Medeoan heard. Events had traveled too far for him to care whether she knew his true mind or not.
Kalami moved. He closed the door and bolted it. The lock beneath the knob had shattered, but the latch remained sound. He climbed the stairs to the linen closet and pulled out Bridget’s thickest quilts. Medeoan did not even stir when he laid her down on the stiff couch and piled the quilts over her cold body. Bridget’s servants had left a goodly pile of wood
and paper beside the stove. He had watched Bridget light it often enough during the time he had lived here, he could light the stove easily, but no. That would lend power to the Firebird, to have its element so close by. The weaker the bird, the more malleable it would be when he was finished with Medeoan.
“Will you speak to me?” he asked the Firebird.
The bird gave no sign of having heard him. It merely pressed itself tightly against the bars, taking its body as far from the window as it could.
Kalami dismissed its silence. It was of no matter. He would require the bird to hear him soon enough.
Now there remained only one thing to fetch. It had always been possible that he would return here. He had expected it to be with Bridget. That also did not matter. The precautions he had taken would work as well on Medeoan.
During his explorations of the house and its light, he had found several coils of rope hung neatly on hooks in one of the cellars. Before he had left, he had hung an extra rope there, where it was most likely to go unnoticed. He had her half-wit boy bring it to him along with the sails of his boat, and he had respliced it right in front of Bridget’s ignorant eyes with hair stolen from her brush and blood from his own hands, and she had believed it was simply one more thing he needed to repair before they could leave on their journey to Isavalta. Twisted of hemp, white silk and all the magic he could summon, it was meant for very different work. He brought it out from the dark cellar and held it in both hands as he crossed to stand beside Medeoan.
The stupor had not yet lifted from her, but the blood was beginning to return to her face and hands, and he could see her chest rising and falling underneath the quilts. She would wake soon. In some ways it would have been better for him to leave her completely to the cold, but if she was too weakened, she would die before he had what he needed of her, and he could not permit that.
He drew back the quilts with one hand and drew his knife with the other. She did stir then, and moan, but she quickly subsided. Methodically, Kalami slit open her clothes, coat, bodice, sleeves, shifts, skirts, underskirts, underclothes, leaving her lying naked in a nest of imperial rags. If she carried with her any protection against enchantment, it was gone now, flown into this dead winter, and she would not get it back. His lip curled in disgust at the sight of her aged body, remembering the glory of the Vixen’s form, and he dropped the quilts back over her.
He pulled the parlor’s footstool up to the edge of the couch and sat down, trying to prepare himself for the great drain that working his craft in this place always opened within him. He twined the rope through his fingers, kissed it, breathed over it and opened his soul.
“In the sea of Dalatov, there is the island of Selatov,” he murmured, slipping the end of the rope around Medeoan’s neck. “And on the island of Selatov there stands one white stone.” He tied the knot loosely. There was no need to choke her, yet.
“And on the one white stone grows one green tree.” He wrapped the rope twice around her wrist. “And in the one green tree sits one red bird.” The air of the room closed in around him. It thickened and chilled until it seemed he was trying to breathe a fog of ice. The Firebird squawked in dumb alarm, as one of the two vital elements it needed for its life was sucked up by Kalami’s charm.
The rope was heavy and his fingers were thick and clumsy. His arm shook as he held out his wrist. “And as the two eyes of the one red bird have but one sight, so you and I shall have but one sight. As you and I are bound by one rope, so shall sight, belief, future, past, flow together and be bound.” The rope was a lead weight, the chill was too much. His bones hurt, there was not enough air. His ears rang with the effort as he raised his hand and wrapped the rope twice around his own right wrist. “This is my word, and my word is firm.”
With those final words, Kalami slumped forward, falling across the dowager like some exhausted lover.
Together, they dreamed.
He was Avanasy, but he had expected that, and Medeoan was a young woman, golden and beautiful, new to her power and sad, but not yet insane. They stood together on a hillside in the red-gold light of the waning day. Her eyes were closed and she swayed on her feet, her soul as unconscious as her body on its sofa.
Kalami raised his hand and laid it across her eyes.
“Wake, Medeoan. You’ve been dreaming.”
Medeoan blinked heavily, shook herself, lifted her gaze, and saw what she wished with all her might to see.
“Avanasy!” She leapt forward as if she had never known decorum and embraced him.
“Medeoan,” he murmured tenderly, running a hand lightly across her hair.
“I had a dream, Avanasy. It was awful.” She pushed him away, but only a little. Her hands still held his shoulders. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she spoke. “I was a mad old woman shut up in my palace. I was afraid of everything, of fire, of the Firebird, of my own people, and you weren’t there. I’d killed you, Avanasy.” She began to pull away. “I’d killed you.”
“You could not kill me,” he said, covering her hands. “I would willingly lay down my life for you. You know that.”
“I do.” She bowed her head, but made no effort to stem her tears. “But, I would never ask …”
Kalami reached under her chin and tilted it up so that she had to look into Avanasy’s face. “You might have to. You are empress.”
At that, she did pull away, turning to look across the valley below them. This was the site where the Firebird had been caged, Kalami realized. The last place she had spoken to Avanasy. This was the place where the final decision had been made. “I don’t want to be empress. Give that to someone who desires the place. Let me be free.”
“Do you mean that, Medeoan?” he asked, moving close to her.
“I mean that.” She faced him abruptly. “I mean it with all my heart. Without empire, I have nothing. No one will deceive me, or claim to love me. I will be myself only, and I won’t have to suffer for being born anymore.”
Kalami, in his guise of Avanasy, shook his head. “I did not know you felt so strongly.”
She stared at him, incredulous. “How could you not know?” She flung out her hands to both sides. “When have I ever said anything else?”
He shrugged softly. “I had thought it the complaints of youth. We all wish to be other than what we are at some time or another.”
She pushed past him, waking down the grassy slope. The sun lit up her golden hair. She had, in the Isavaltan fashion, been beautiful, he mused. “I am lied to and lied to and lied to yet again because of what I am,” she told the valley. “I am dealt with nothing but falsely because I am my father’s daughter. I am played as a pawn and a fool, waking and sleeping. How could I not wish to be other than what I am?”
Kalami hung his head. “I can free you, Medeoan.”
“Can you?” She spun around, all eagerness.
“I can.” He strolled over to her, his hands folded behind his back. “It will not be easy, but it can be done.”
“How?” she demanded. “I think you already know.”
She shook her head, looking very young in her bewilderment.
“Then I will tell you.” Kalami took her hands. They were smooth and soft yet. The calluses and scars came to her much later, companions of the years of hoarding her power and her secrets. “When you caged the Firebird, you caged yourself with it. Your deepest self is bound up in that weaving, and you cannot be cut free of it.”
Slowly, reluctance filling her bright eyes, Medeoan lifted her hands away. “I cannot release the Firebird. Ever. It will burn Isavalta.”
“No, you cannot release it.” Kalami smiled Avanasy’s smile. “But you can give it to me.”
“You would take it?” she breathed, as if speaking too loud would whisk his words away.
He reverenced and said solemnly, “Medeoan, I would. Give me the knowledge of how to keep the cage whole and I will take it from you. You will no longer be empress. The bird and your realm will all be safe in my hands, and y
ou will be free.”
He extended his hand, Avanasy’s hand. So simple. The object of her desire, the one person she trusted, and her own fears, all combined in this place where she had no protection. She was his here, at last, she was his.
But even as he reached for her, she stepped back. “It cannot be done.”
“It can. You know it can. Come, Medeoan.” He moved close again, his hand out, Avanasy’s voice gentle, yet firm. “If it is truly what you wish, let me take this burden from you. You always meant to give it to me. Do it now.”
“I will be free.” Her hand clasped his. “I will yet be free.”
As soon as he felt the touch of her unblemished palm, Kalami knew something was wrong. He was not Avanasy. He was a boy, a child, eight years old and staring up into the face of his father, grim, wrinkled and stooped from his labors.
“You thought you could lie to me?” his father demanded. “You thought I would not know!”
“No, Papa …” His grip hurt. There would be a beating, and that would hurt even worse, but he could not stop struggling.
“I kept you safe. I would have made you great, but you were greedy! You saw only the past, and your vengeance.”
“Papa, please, I had to!” he cried. Papa had found out about the teaching in the dark huts and corners. Papa had found the horoscopes, the bones and the tiny drum. Papa had found out about the blood. “They were killing us! They would wipe out even the memory of what we were! I couldn’t let that happen! We were great once! They feared us!”
“And who do you fear now, boy?” Papa yanked him forward so Valin could smell his rotting breath. Papa grabbed his head and wrenched it around so Valin must look at him. “Who is it you fear!”
No, no, no, his father was dead, long dead, his ashes scattered on the sea winds on the south shore, as it was supposed to be, even though he had requested an Isavaltan burial. Valin was no boy, not anymore, he was a man, and this before him …
Before him was an old, shriveled woman, her hands blue with cold, and all cold to the touch where she held him, where he held her, where she held him.
