by Rosalyn Eves
What you could be, Anna Arden, if you were not afraid.
I had promised myself I would try to end the war. Making myself small, flinching from my powers because I did not like who they made me, would not help me—would not help any of us.
If my friends could see what was monstrous in me and still love me, still believe in me, I could do no less.
“We cannot stay here,” I said.
“I know,” she said, smoothing my hair. “I know.”
* * *
Our particular stretch of the caverns was often deserted, indifferent praetheria deterred by the presence of the guards. But word must have spread of the strange human girl who fell through walls, because a steady parade of praetheria streamed past our cell that morning. Eventually, Noémi and I gave up attending to them and turned to our own pursuits. If we were boring enough, they would lose interest.
Most of the praetheria slowed outside our room but did not stop. Midmorning the next day, a pair of praetheria stopped and stood staring at us. I did not look up from my book, though I read the same line three times without comprehending.
“Anna?” one said at last, and I looked up.
The lidérc grinned back at me.
I sprang up and would have hugged her, save a last-minute awareness that the guards—two Valkyries this time—were watching and might wonder at the unaccustomed familiarity. I looked closely at the lidérc’s companion, which was not easy: her edges blurred a bit, and my eyes wanted to move over her without stopping. A glamour, I realized, and once I knew that, I could see the girl beneath the spell: a sturdy girl with two brown braids and a red-lined mantle.
“Emilija?” I kept my voice low. “How did you come here?”
She made a face. “It was some time before we realized you were no longer at the palace, and longer than that before we discovered what had happened to you.”
“It was the new emperor who told us you were gone,” the lidérc said. “A week or so after his coronation, he came to ask if we knew where you were, as he knew we had come with you to the city.”
His mother had not told him. I huffed a short laugh. Somehow, I was not surprised. Franz Joseph would not have been party to the trade that had been arranged between Her Royal Highness and the Russian court. “What did you think had happened to me, when I did not return?”
The two women exchanged a look, and I wondered at this new friendship. Emilija and the lidérc had scarcely known each other when I left them in Vienna. Yet they had come all this way together. For me.
“We thought you were busy with the new emperor, enjoying the luxuries of the palace,” Emilija said. I read beneath her polite words: We thought you had forgotten us.
“I didn’t forget you,” I said. “I had no choice.”
“We know that now,” the lidérc said. “Which is a lucky thing for you.”
“The Russian delegation was not hard to track,” Emilija said, “once we knew to look for them. But after they passed the fortress at Komárom, they disappeared.”
“Magic,” the lidérc said.
Emilija shot her another look. “Anyway, it was some time before the lidérc could find a praetherian who knew of this place and could give us directions. She glamoured me, and here we are.”
“Your timing is excellent,” I said. “We need your help to get out of the caves.” If they could sneak in, they could sneak us out.
“We supposed as much,” Emilija said. “If you could get out, you’d have done so already.”
“The sooner, the better,” the lidérc said, shivering.
I raised my eyebrows in question. I’d not thought the lidérc afraid of anything.
“A human mob cornered me in a cave once. And instead of coming in to flush me out themselves, they sent an Elementalist to flood the cave, to wash me out.”
I pictured the horror of water rising all around me, pressing me against stone walls. “How terrifying. We’ll leave as soon as we can.”
* * *
We waited until dawn, when most of the praetheria slept. The guards who had taken up their watch a couple hours earlier had been drawn away by the lidérc’s magic before Emilija came to fetch us.
“Come quickly,” she said.
Noémi and I were already dressed, and we brought nothing with us—our missing things would give warning sooner than our absence from our room. Gábor’s letters were the only things it pained me to leave, but the lidérc had searched for them the day before, using her glamour to gain access to private chambers denied to Noémi and me, and had turned up nothing. I could only pray that Gábor wrote nothing incriminating, and that he would stop writing when I did not reply.
I hoped he would not pay for my carelessness.
I hoped he would forgive me my forced silence.
I glanced down the empty corridor. Some distance away, a light pulsed like a star. Even though I knew what it was—a projection of glamour, like the one the lidérc had used to draw away the satyr—it still tugged at me. Noémi took an unwitting step toward it, and I pulled her back. “It’s only the lidérc.”
We crept down the silent passageway. At the branching of a pair of caverns, Emilija pulled us into a crevice. Our movement dislodged a few bats, which dove low over us before flying off, and Emilija swore softly.
We waited for some time, breathing shallowly, until the lidérc joined us. She did not tell us what she had done to occupy the guards after drawing them away, but a satisfied smirk graced her face. She cast a glamour over the three of us—I felt the faint tingle as it settled—and we set off.
Abandoning the need for silence in favor of speed, I led the others through the tangled cave system on a roundabout passage that would avoid the most densely occupied caverns. Most of the chambers we crossed were empty of praetheria at this early hour, though I tensed whenever we passed someone. The lidérc unfailingly greeted each passerby with a nod or a word, and I held my breath, waiting for them to see past our glamour, waiting for them to call her out as a stranger. No one did.
Sometimes the way was easy, the path worn clear by many feet or the cave sufficiently wide and even. Sometimes we struggled, hugging close to the walls and watching our footing carefully as the elevation lifted and plunged.
We edged around the lake, its rippled surface black in the dim light. I caught my foot on a loose rock and had to sidestep to regain my balance. My shoe splashed into the shallow water at the lake’s edge.
The lake erupted, a dark shape vaulting like a geyser above the water. The creature was enormous: long fins like oars and a narrow snout with dagger-sharp teeth. I scrambled away, and the teeth closed on empty air.
An echoed shout rang through the cavern. My shout, I realized, seeing the horrified looks on the other girls’ faces. What if we’d been heard?
“Run!” Emilija hissed, and we ran.
We made it through the caverns to the scree near the exit without being stopped. As casually as though she were going to fetch supplies from the nearby forest, the lidérc marched toward the guards. We followed close behind, so the noise of our passing was covered by hers, so her glamour could stretch to fit us all.
“Good hunting,” said the nearest one, a stocky man with skin like the midnight sky, a constellation of lights pulsing just below the surface.
“Thank you,” the lidérc said.
Noémi’s face was green-tinged as we emerged onto the mountainside, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly. The sky was the pale grey of dawn, and I turned my face toward the light like a parched creature toward water. I had not seen the sun in so long.
The rich smell of pine needles and decaying leaves was exhilarating after the rock and water smells of the caves. This was how freedom smelled. How it tasted.
Emilija nudged me, and I remembered our urgency. I scrambled down the slope behind her, drawing Noémi with me
.
We were out. Another mile or two and we might be far enough away to breathe easily.
We did not make it a mile.
We did not even make it a score of steps before a shadow draped across us. I glanced up, thinking (hoping) a cloud had passed across the sun. But the figure hulking above us was no cloud; it was a giant, and Vasilisa was perched on his shoulder like a bird.
The giant’s fingers closed around me like the steel bars of a trap.
Perhaps the tardiness of the Hungarian armies was catching. I returned from Guyon’s camp to find Dembiński still in the farmhouse, surveying maps over a low table and blustering to Hadúr. “Dammit, where is Görgey? I need him on the right flank. Bloody fools are already retreating; the Austrians forced a river crossing during the night.”
“You sent him to cover the left flank,” Hadúr said, his voice deceptively gentle.
“I need someone to cover the ridge at Kerecsend,” Dembiński continued, as if Hadúr hadn’t spoken. “Someone who will not run the first time a bullet whistles past his ear. We have to hold the heights: if we must retreat, as seems likely, that’s our best hope for fending off the Austrians long enough to get across the bridge before we’re cut off and surrounded.”
“Guyon is coming, sir,” I said as soon as Dembiński paused to draw a breath.
“About damn time.” Dembiński did not seem to mark the hypocrisy as he stood up from the table and rolled up the map he’d been studying. He pointed the map at Hadúr, then at me and Bahadır. “You three—take charge of the heights. Those are Colonel Klapka’s men, but he’s gone haring off to Eger after the rest of his army.”
Hadúr nodded once. His stolid face betrayed nothing of how he felt at being ordered about like a common foot soldier, let alone by a general whose orders seemed at cross purposes. Then we grasped our weapons, mounted our horses, and rode to war beneath a pale November sky.
We found the ridge easily enough, a long, gradually rising prominence culminating in a steep drop-off in the north. The southern side was wooded, offering decent coverage for the troops.
Well, such troops as they were.
We arrived just as Austrian cavalry ruptured across the field before the ridge. They could not be meant as a serious attack—no seasoned commander would send cavalry to attack soldiers hiding amid the trees. But no one had told our infantrymen as much: a whole stream of them came running down the south side of the ridge, bursting from the wood like startled pheasants.
As the soldiers poured toward us, Hadúr muttered something. Glancing back, I saw that he’d dismounted, so I reined in my horse. Chin tilted heavenward and eyes closed, Hadúr unslung the great longsword he wore at his hip and plunged the tip into the ground.
A shockwave radiated out from that point. My horse sidestepped uneasily, and the men running toward us stumbled.
“Men of Hungary!” Hadúr roared. “Hold your ground!”
The men stopped running. A thin, reluctant awe curled around my heart, and I rubbed the cross I wore. I was not much given to worship, but there was something in Hadúr’s call that spoke of older times, when both men and gods seemed greater than they did now.
“Go back up the ridge. Hold your position. If you die, let it be with honor—not spitted on the point of my sword for cowardice.”
More frightened of Hadúr than the cavalry, the soldiers climbed back up the ridge. We followed, leading our horses on foot. Already the cavalry had pulled back, with the Austrian infantry marching across the field in their place. Hungarian sharpshooters fired down on them.
Now that there was no turning back, I was light-headed, almost giddy. The battle scrolled out before me like a hand of cards—a bit of luck, and I could turn the cards to my advantage. Or I might be flattened by them. The risk tapped a familiar, seductive drumbeat along my veins.
Beside me, Bahadır stared across the field. What did he feel? Was he calm, his training granting him assurance and serenity? Or was he, like me, aware of his heartbeat ratcheting up, of the hum of excitement thrilling through him? Probably he had more sense.
A bombardment of Austrian rockets began, smoking propellants firing over the heads of the advancing infantry to land on our ridge. Hadúr urged the Hungarian infantry to meet the charge, but daunted by the bursts of rocket fire, they held back.
But what the infantry refused, Bahadır took upon himself, creeping to the tree line, where he had a vantage over the valley below, and firing his gun at the advancing foe. He had run from a fight once, fleeing from the men who killed his father and would have killed him. But in the months I had known him, I had never seen him run (well, save once, but Ákos had made him do it). I suspected his father’s ghost goaded him, as mine did, though to better purpose.
When I moved to join him, Hadúr stopped me. “You’re táltos. Don’t waste yourself on military arms—use what gifts you have.” And then he stomped off, to try to re-form the infantry into something resembling order.
Since my death, my being táltos had been drubbed into my brain as though this were some incredible gift that would save Hungary. But standing on an unremarkable ridge in the middle of a battle, I lacked the faith of Hadúr and the Lady.
Most of my gifts seemed flimsy things here. I might summon an army of crows to attack the advancing soldiers, but they’d be slaughtered by rifle fire. I might disorient the enemy horses, but what of the infantry? I might send my spirit into the enemy camp to discover their plans, but who would protect my body on this ridge while I dreamed?
The dragon shape nudged at me. Yes, I might shift. But I had little control in that form—I could as soon destroy my allies as my enemies.
Another form would have to do. I shucked off my clothes and shifted, picturing a griffin I’d seen in the Binding spell: the forequarters of an eagle, the hindquarters of a lion. Flexing my wings, I lifted above the trees, then circled above my own troops once, twice, getting used to the feel of this new form.
Then I dove down toward the infantry, who veered out of my way, shrieking. A handful turned and ran. One hardy soldier stopped and took aim: I dropped low and snatched him up with my sharp claws and lifted him, screaming, into the air. At a sufficient height, I flung him back toward his fellows, and three of them toppled beneath his weight like a set of children’s toys.
The soldier did not rise. I suppressed a pang of guilt. This was war: I could not afford to feel sorry for each soldier I killed.
I flew a few more circles above the troops, evading their attempts to shoot me down. The stray bullet that grazed my wing did no more than sting. The infantry began retreating before me. I could hear whooping behind me and caught a glimpse of a few of our soldiers clambering down the ridge to give chase to the fleeing enemy.
Then a whoosh! and a sudden burst of heat, and the ridge exploded in flames. The men coming down the hill writhed in agony, their cries hoarse and terrible.
A pair of Elementalists had caught up with the infantry. I could see them just beyond the Austrian troops, their hands weaving an intricate spell.
I might trap their hands in an iron-laden vine—most Luminate could not cast spells without their rituals—but it was hard to hold the griffin form in my head and catch the pair of them at once. I concentrated on the first magician, but the vines had scarcely begun to twine around her feet when a ball of fire nearly knocked me from the sky.
Fire licked up my right wing, leaving my wingtip blackened and smoking. Awkward, listing hard to the left, I faltered over to the shelter of the trees beyond the burning ridgeline. I shifted back to my own form, gasping at my arm, the raw red patches on my fingers, the burns bubbling along my wrist. The tips of my middle and pointer finger appeared white and did not hurt at all, which was a bad sign. If I’d taken the dragon form, I’d not have burned. I pushed the regret aside and found my discarded clothes near Bahadır.
My friend a
bandoned his vantage point to inspect my arm. “There’s a medic back among Guyon’s troops—you need to get this treated.”
I shook my head. “Not yet. Just find something clean to wrap my hand in. I’ll have a healer look at it tonight.”
Bahadır’s eyebrows drew together in exasperation. “If you do not die first of stupidity. Sit—you look pale. I don’t want you fainting.”
“It’s your magnetic presence,” I murmured, sitting obediently. “I can’t help myself.”
Bahadır laughed, as I had meant him to. He cut a strip of linen from his undershirt and wrapped it around my fingers and wrist. I wished Noémi were here, her cool fingers lifting the burn from my skin.
But the war hadn’t stopped while Bahadır tended my injury: a crackling noise drew my attention to where smoke billowed from the trees. Soldiers were retreating around us, coughing at the acrid fumes. A wind—Elementalist-driven?—had picked up, sending the flames back toward us.
I staggered to my feet. “We’ve got to hold the ridge, or the others will be cut off.”
“I’m not sure we can,” Bahadır said. “Not without risking more lives than is sensible.”
Hadúr’s voice roared across the crackling fire. “Retreat! Head south and east toward the Kerecsend bridge!”
“Can you walk?” Bahadır asked, taking a half step toward me.
“It was my arm that burned, not my legs,” I said, but as I moved, the trees spun around me and pain radiated from my hand to my shoulder. Bahadır put his arm around me, supporting me as I walked.
We reached the bottom of the slope to find the Hungarian army in disarray: infantry and cavalry mingled together, rushing aimlessly through a muddy field.
“Toward Kerecsend!” Hadúr’s voice carried over the troops, his words calming the chaos and shaping it into a sluggish eastward drift.
A curious lifting sensation pulled at the top of my head, as though a hot-air balloon were attached to my scalp.
