by Rosalyn Eves
“Lead them where?” Noémi was asking. “Against human soldiers? Against our friends? You have a choice, as much as the next creature. You do not have to fight this war.”
Hunger studied her face for a long moment. His eyes seemed sad. “I have made my choice.” He bowed abruptly, then walked away, leaving us to make our way back to our room in silence.
I thought of Borbála, telling Marina she would always choose her. I wanted that for Noémi—someone to wipe out the memories of everyone who had chosen something else instead of her: her father, who had shot himself; Mátyás, who had died in the Binding spell for me and then stayed in the puszta instead of finding her when he was reborn; William, who loved his revolution. I, who had failed her so completely that she had run from Vienna with Hunger.
And Hunger.
Had we not been surrounded by praetheria who would have stopped me, I would have run after Hunger and scratched his pretty face with my bare hands for adding wounds to the invisible scars Noémi already bore.
Since I couldn’t hurt him, I watched Noémi instead. But there was nothing in her carefully blank gaze to read.
* * *
I woke that night to stillness, the quiet broken only by Noémi’s soft breathing and a faint dripping somewhere, the endless stream of mineral-laced water that produced the vast stone sculptures of the caverns.
Something was missing.
It took me a moment to identify it, but when I did, I sat bolt upright: the low murmur of voices between the praetheria who guarded us.
“Noémi,” I said, just as a brilliant flare lit the opening of our small chamber, a hungry flame licking up the curtain Noémi had hung. Ash rained down on the stone floor.
The samodiva queen stood just beyond the disintegrating curtain, fire dancing up and down her arms.
I rubbed the prickling gooseflesh on my own arms beneath my nightdress. Hunger had warned us to be wary, but nothing had come of his warnings and I had forgotten them. Too late now. Across the room, Noémi sat up with a gasp.
“My sister is dead,” the queen said, “and her death is still unanswered. You are blood kin to the man who killed her.”
“My brother is not a killer,” Noémi said.
I spoke at the same time, my words crossing Noémi’s. “Mátyás wouldn’t have killed Zhivka, not deliberately.”
“He set bees on us, unprovoked, and she died from the stings.”
“Oh,” Noémi said, her healer’s mind moving more rapidly than mine to grasp the implications. In a much smaller voice: “Oh. I am so sorry. That is a terrible way to die.”
“Surely it was an accident,” I said. “Why must her death be answered?”
I did not see the hand moving before a thin whip of fire lashed across my cheek.
“I will ask the questions. You are prisoner here, not me.”
I rubbed the burning welt on my cheek. There must be something that would satisfy the queen short of our deaths.
“Hunger will not be pleased if you kill us,” Noémi said.
This seemed to give the samodiva queen pause. She frowned, her beautiful mouth pinched. “It is true the spell breaker might still be useful. But you are his full sister, and it might be better for Hunger were you gone. His attachment to you is a weakness we cannot afford.”
The queen’s body lit as though she were flame, and she advanced on Noémi. I cast out my inner sense, searching for the source of the fire, but the samodiva queen cast no spell—the fire was simply an extension of herself.
She shot a blast at Noémi, who rolled off her bed to the stone floor. Her bedroll ignited behind her.
I screamed, scrambling to put myself between the two of them.
The queen tossed a second volley of flame, but a barrier of ice flashed up between Noémi and the fire. The ice turned, sizzling, into steam, and the fire died.
“Stop!” my uncle said, his voice commanding. “These two are my kin. If you kill them, I will challenge you myself.”
The queen let her fire fizzle out. “I cannot let my sister’s death go unanswered.”
Pál opened his hands, revealing two palms full of honeybees. “A sting for a sting,” he said. “Pain for pain.”
The samodiva hesitated. It was not what she wanted—I could see as much in her eyes—but she seemed reluctant to cross Pál. Again, I wondered precisely how my uncle fit among the Four. “All right.”
Pál lifted his hands, and the bees flew toward us. The first one reached me, stinging almost at once: a hot dagger slash across my cheek. The others settled on me, dozens of featherlight legs followed by burning points tattooed over my body. Noémi cried out. I must have done the same, but I didn’t notice: the pain stitching across my skin blotted out everything else.
It is a sad truth of bees that when they leave their stinger behind, they die. When the tiny bodies had fallen to the ground, the samodiva queen gave a short nod before swinging around, her white skirts trailing behind her as she left us.
Noémi gasped, rubbing her hands over the angry welts across her skin. My arms were bubbled and red.
Pál twitched his hands, and the bee corpses disappeared, along with the stinging spots across my body, although the pain lingered.
“How—?” Noémi began.
“Illusion,” I said.
Pál bowed. “I could have driven her away, but she would have come back. This way she finds herself answered, and she might leave you alone. However, you should not forget that you are prisoners here, not guests, and this makes you vulnerable.” He cast me a sly glance, his oddly pale eyes gleaming. “Or you can swear allegiance to me, and I will keep you safe.”
Gooseflesh rose on my skin. I knew—more or less—what the praetherian aims were. But Pál was a mystery to me, opaque and dangerous. “No,” I said.
“Very well,” he said, pleasantly enough. “But remember: you are not safe here.”
The day following our confrontation with the samodiva queen, Vasilisa inspected the bare rings drilled into rock where the curtain to our cell had hung, then looked at me. “I am sorry you were disturbed last night. Some of us,” she said, her voice dripping disdain, “allow personal feelings to compromise our larger goal.”
I wondered if she meant Hunger as well.
Vasilisa drew me into the corridor to practice breaking spells. She cast a few halfhearted spells at me that I broke easily, but when she asked me to unmake a ring she’d brought, I could not do it. The ring remained a stubborn, immutable circle of gold in my palm.
“You are too much in your head,” she said. “You think too much of what will happen, and then nothing does.”
“I don’t want to unmake anything.”
“But you will, because this is your fate and you cannot outrun that. Sooner or later, it will claim you.”
I don’t believe in fate, I thought. We made our own fate through our choices. But I said nothing, and Vasilisa swept away, grumbling to herself.
* * *
I wrote to Gábor of my sessions with Vasilisa and of Hunger bringing leaves to Noémi. I don’t know what to make of it all. I wish I could see what larger vision their actions fit.
Gábor wrote back that evening.
I do not have to be a Coremancer to read Hunger’s actions: he admires Noémi. Vasilisa’s goals are less clear. Learn what you can from her, but be careful. The praetheria are not our friends, however charming they might be.
Though I do not think you need to study to unmake things—you unmake me every time we speak.
Sorry. That sounded better in my head. I meant to give you a compliment, to defuse the strength of my imperatives. I don’t mean to tell you what to do, only support you.
Let me try again.
The curve of your smile is sharper than a winter wind.
Not that. You are neither frigi
d nor sharp.
The ink broke off with a jagged edge and a smeared line, and then, in a different hand: Like a well-tuned violin, you bring forth sweet music under a master’s touch. The line had been crossed through with a heavier hand than the previous ones, and I had to hold the paper to the light to read it.
When the meaning penetrated, my whole face ignited with heat.
My apologies. One of my Romani fellows mistook my frowning expression as a plea for aid. Perhaps: You might break a thousand spells and a thousand hearts, but you cannot break me—I am already in pieces before you.
It’s fortunate for me that I’m a better soldier and scientist than poet, though rather unfortunate for you.
I laughed, as I suspected Gábor had meant for me to do with his increasingly absurd compliments. He continued, more seriously:
I wrote last time that Kossuth had sent me to the Army of the Danube to watch General Görgey. I think Görgey may have his own suspicions of Kossuth, and of me, because he has sent me to assist General Richard Guyon instead. You’d like Guyon, not least because he’s an Englishman. We’re off to stop the Austrians from advancing through the northern mountains and claiming the mines. I mean to watch for the praetheria as we travel: with any luck, I’ll find you as well. I miss you. Go with God and in good health.
I read the letter twice, then a third time. I tapped the paper, the words of the Vanishing spell on my lips. But I didn’t speak them. Gábor’s lightheartedness warmed me like a charm in winter, and I was reluctant to erase it. In England, I had counted laughter cheap: something to fill hours of boredom. I knew better now. Laughter kept the darkness at bay. Some days, it was all we had.
I kept the letter. I might need that laughter again.
* * *
“A challenge! A challenge!” The words seemed to ricochet through the winding chambers of the caves, carried by hundreds—thousands—of praetherian voices. Underneath and around the German and Hungarian that I understood were dozens of other echoes, some languages I recognized and others I did not.
I set down the book I was reading and looked at Noémi. “Should we investigate?”
She shook her head. “What if it’s another soldier?”
I swallowed hard at the memory of the boy in the shako hat, entombed beneath the cavern floor. Noémi and I had avoided that branch of the cave ever since.
I picked up my book again, but the words blurred together. The chanting was growing louder, more insistent. Whatever this was, it was bigger than the soldier.
I put the book down and stood up. “I can’t ignore this. What if it’s something that might affect us?”
Noémi sighed and slipped a long needle back into a fabric sleeve. “Your curiosity is going to get us both killed someday.”
I grinned at her with a lightness I did not feel and slid my arm through hers. “Or perhaps it will save us.”
We followed the chanting to its source, in one of the larger caverns with a roughly level floor. Praetheria were clustered all around the edges, clinging precariously to stone icicles, perched on top of rocky mounds, the larger praetheria lifting the smaller ones for a better view.
I could see nothing but a sea of heads and backs, which meant that Noémi, who was both shorter and had poorer vision, saw even less.
I tapped the arm of a praetherian near me, a tree-creature with green barklike skin and curling antlers who stood several heads taller than me. “What is going on?”
“A challenge,” the creature rumbled, eyes fixed forward.
“For what? Between whom?”
At my new questions, the creature looked down at me, warm brown eyes widening. “You are not one of us.”
There were a few humans aside from Noémi and me among the praetheria, but not many. Most of the others had come as romantic partners to the praetheria. A few, like Pál, sought whatever influence they could find. “No,” I agreed.
“We have not had a challenge since long before the Binding broke, when the Four won their places at our head by defeating all comers.”
“Who is challenged?” Noémi asked, her voice suddenly taut with worry, her arm tense against mine.
“The samodiva queen,” the tree-creature said, and Noémi relaxed, almost imperceptibly. “Here,” the creature said, sweeping us both up and setting one on each shoulder. I steadied myself, one hand grasping an antler, and the creature rumbled. Was that laughter?
Now we could see the floor before us, a tightly ringed opening where two praetheria faced one another: the samodiva queen burned bright—I could feel the waves of warmth radiating from her even at this distance—but her flames obscured her opponent. Hunger and Vasilisa stood at the edge of the ring. The last member of the Four, Count Svarog, was not present. I supposed he must still be with the Russian tsar. Pál stood near Vasilisa, a pleased smirk on his face.
“Chernobog,” Hunger said in a loud voice that carried through the room, “state your challenge.”
The challenger shifted position, and I could see him more clearly: the horned praetherian who had buried the soldier in rock.
“The queen has proved herself weak and unfit to be one of the Four: she let a valuable resource escape, as grief for one of her sisters compromised her.”
Was he talking about Mátyás? But if he had escaped, then why was Vasilisa not also at fault? I glanced from the samodiva queen to Vasilisa and guessed that Chernobog deemed the queen the weaker of the two.
“Grief is not a weakness,” Hunger said. “We have all grieved for the praetheria hounded and hunted by our enemies.”
“If we are to attain our former glory, we cannot afford such grief,” Chernobog said. “And it is my right as a member of this company to challenge the queen.”
“You understand that if you lose this challenge and survive, you will be cast from us,” Vasilisa said.
“I am not afraid.”
Hunger turned to the samodiva queen. “Zhena, do you accept this challenge?”
I’d never heard anyone say her name before.
“I accept.” The queen’s voice rang clear and bright and unafraid.
The creature beneath us murmured, “The queen has not been challenged in a very long time, and she has used much of her strength mourning her sister. I think she will find this battle much harder than she expects.”
“Then begin,” Hunger said.
The ring around the queen and Chernobog widened as the spectators moved back to give them space. Chernobog billowed upward, his physical body growing even as a pair of softly furred bat wings unfolded from his back. The samodiva queen stood her ground, but the fire wreathing her seemed to brighten. A ripple of desire swept through the audience, a craving so dizzying that I nearly fell from my perch and only the steady hand of the creature below me kept me upright. The circle around the contestants tightened again as the praetheria pressed forward, drawn closer to the samodiva queen.
Chernobog laughed. “Your glamours may work on humans and weaker folk, but they do not touch me.”
The glamour vanished. I had not even recognized it as a spell until it was gone: I felt as though someone had doused me with cold water. My body, which had been flush and warm, was now chilled and empty.
A ring of fire sprang up around Chernobog, high enough to mask all but the tips of his horns. He laughed again. “I am the king of hell demons. Do you think a little fire will daunt me?”
He vaulted through the flames, a clawlike hand extended before him to grasp the samodiva’s throat. He thrust her backward, the crowd parting before them, to slam her body against a stalagmite nearly as wide as she was. She clawed at his fingers, her flame rising white-hot around her. A few of the praetheria nearest her fell to the ground, overcome by the heat. But though Chernobog flinched, he did not release her.
The samodiva kicked at him, filmy wings sproutin
g from her back and batting furiously at the air. Chernobog ignored her blows and pushed her back against the rock, her feet and legs seeming to melt into the stone.
No. I knew how this ended.
Flames soared around the samodiva, heat so intense that I flinched away. Every bit of water from the room seemed to evaporate, leaving the air like sawdust in my lungs. Beside me, Noémi coughed.
Chernobog roared: this heat touched even him. His wings unfurled, stirring a great wind through the caverns, but the flames only swirled higher. I thought for a moment he would release her: the scent of cooked flesh filled the air where the samodiva’s fire seared his skin. But he just grunted and pushed deeper, and the flames were slowly extinguished. The samodiva queen was buried in the rock, only a fragile bit of wing dangling from the stone.
For a long beat, nothing happened. The room was still, everyone’s attention focused on the rock where the samodiva was buried. Bright lines like lightning splayed out from the center, and then the stone burst, crumbling like a pot left too long in a kiln.
The samodiva queen was blazing with rage, and the wave of heat radiating from her knocked the assembled praetheria back a pace.
She shot a fireball at Chernobog, who sprang upward, the sweep of his wings sending air gusting around the cavern. He broke a spear of rock from the ceiling and hurled it down at the queen, who dodged and flung herself up to join him in the air, her filmy wings gleaming like sunlight.
A second volley of rock caught the queen on the shoulder and crumpled one of her fragile wings. She tumbled down, landing with a sickening crunch on the stone floor below. Someone cried out.
Before she could rise, Chernobog had landed beside her, a great taloned foot lashing out to stomp on her throat. He reached down and wrenched her head to one side. The accompanying crack resounded through the chamber.
Chernobog lifted his foot away and scooped up the queen’s body. He rose into the air with her limp form dangling from his grip like a small, fading star. The samodiva’s radiant fire trailed away, unfocused and lost, dissipating into smoke.
