25.

The Girl in the Tower

Vasya threw herself onto Solovey and he galloped out of the barn, while the flames snapped wolflike at their heels. They emerged into some lurid parody of daylight; flames from the burning barn cast a hellish glow over dooryard and lights shone from every part of Dmitrii’s palace.

There was a pitched battle in the dooryard, and a roaring like a riot above. She couldn’t see her brother—but Vasya could hardly tell friend from foe in the wicked light.

Long cracks had appeared in the main gate; it would not hold much longer. Slaves ran with buckets and wet blankets to put out the flames; half the guardsmen were helping them now. Fire was just as great a danger as arrows, in a city made all of wood.

Then that half-familiar shriek came again. The light from the burning barn threw the whole yard into flickering relief, and she saw Konstantin Nikonovich creeping along the inner wall.

What is he doing here? Vasya wondered. At first she felt nothing but surprise.

Then she saw with horror that the priest clutched a child by one wrist. The girl had no cloak, no kerchief, no boots. She was shivering miserably.

“Aunt Vasya!” she shrilled, in a voice Vasya knew. “Aunt Vasya!” Her voice sailed clear through the sweltering air. “Let me go!”

“Masha!” Vasya cried in disbelief. A child? A prince’s daughter? Here?

Then she saw Kasyan Lutovich. He was running down into the dooryard, mouth open with mingled rage and triumph. He leaped bareback onto one of the escaped horses, wheeled, and came galloping along the wall, heedless of arrows.

For a breath, Vasya did not understand.

In that moment, with a perfectly timed movement, Kasyan overtook Konstantin, snatched the girl, and flung her facedown on the horse’s sweating shoulder.

“Masha!” Vasya shouted. Solovey had already spun to chase them down. Great arcs of slush flew from his galloping feet. Vasya crouched on his neck, forgetting the arrows. But horse and rider had the whole width of the dooryard to cross, and Kasyan gained the terem-steps unmolested. He slid down the horse’s shoulder, with Marya held, kicking, under one arm. His glance rose and met Vasya’s. “Now,” Kasyan called to her, teeth bared, eyes glittering with the rising flames, “you may regret your pride.”

He hurried up with Marya into the darkness. “You promised!” Konstantin cried after him, arriving, stumbling, at the foot of the stairs and hesitating before the dark tunnel of the staircase. “You said—”

A ripple of wild laughter answered him, then silence. Konstantin stood gaping up into the dark.

Solovey and Vasya reached the other side of the yard. Konstantin spun to face them. Solovey reared, his hooves a breath from the priest’s head, and Konstantin toppled backward. Vasya leaned forward, her glance as cold as her voice. Behind them came the battering on the gate; above them, the ringing of swords. “What have you done? What does he want with my niece?”

“He promised me vengeance,” Konstantin whispered. He was shivering all over. “He said I had but to—”

“In the name of God!” cried Vasya. She slid down Solovey’s shoulder. “Vengeance for what? I once saved your life. While you were still a man, unbroken, I saved your life. Have you forgotten? What does he want with her?”

For a flicker, she saw the painter, the priest, somewhere beneath the layers of bitterness. “He said that if I were to have you, then he must have her,” Konstantin whispered. “He said I could—” His voice grew shriller. “I didn’t want to! But you left me! You left me alone, seeing devils. What was I to do? Come now. You are here now, and I ask only—”

“You have been tricked, again,” interrupted Vasya coldly. “Get out of my sight. You baptized my sister’s child; for her sake I will not kill you.”

“Vasya,” said Konstantin. He made to reach out; Solovey snapped yellow teeth and his hand dropped. “I did it for you. Because of you. I—I hate you. You—are beautiful.” He said this like a curse. “If you had only listened—”

“You have only been the tool of wickeder things,” she returned. “But I have had enough of it. Next time I see you, Konstantin Nikonovich, I am going to kill you.”

He drew himself up. Perhaps he meant to speak again. But she had no more time. She hissed a word to Solovey; the stallion reared, swift as a snake. Konstantin stumbled back, mouth open, dodging the stallion’s hooves, and then he fled. Vasya heard him weep as he ran.

But she did not watch him go. The dark stairs above seemed to breathe horrors, though the rest of the dooryard was alight from the burning stable. She gathered herself to hurry upward alone. “Solovey,” she said, looking behind her, a foot on the first step. “You must—”

But then she paused, for the sound of battle above and behind her had changed. Vasya turned to look again at the dooryard. The flames in the stable leaped higher than trees now, burning a strange, dull scarlet.

Dark things with slavering mouths began creeping out of the reddened shadows.

Vasya’s blood turned cold. Dmitrii’s men in the dooryard stumbled. Here and there a sword fell from a nerveless hand. A man above screamed.

“Solovey,” Vasya whispered. “What—?”

Then, with a final, rending crack, the gate gave. Chelubey came galloping into the red light calling orders, competent, fearless. He had archers to his left and right, and they filled the dooryard with arrows.

Dmitrii’s men, already wavering, broke. Now Vasya had an impression of loss and horror and chaos; horses fleeing blind, arrows flying over the wall-top, and all around pallid, grinning things that came stumbling out of the bloody dark, hands reaching, smiles pasted on faces sloppy with rot. Behind them came warriors, steadily advancing, with quick horses and bright swords.

Was this sorcery? Could Kasyan call fiends from Hell and make them answer? What was he doing with Marya up there in the tower? The flames from the stable seemed drenched in blood, and more and more creatures crept from the shadows, driving her people onto the blades of their attackers.

An arrow whistled past her head and thudded into the post beside her. Vasya jerked in startled reflex. One of the horrors stretched out a clawing hand toward her, grinning, its eyes blind. Solovey lashed out with his forefeet, and the thing fell back.

Chelubey’s deep voice called again. The rain of arrows grew fiercer. Dmitrii’s men could not rally against this new threat; they were fighting ghosts. In a moment the Russians would be cut down, one by one.

Then Sasha’s voice rang out, clearly, calmly. “People of God,” he said, “do not be afraid.”

SASHA HAD LEFT HIS SISTER at the postern-gate and gone running up the stairs into the melee of the palace, following the Grand Prince’s voice, the screams and the crashing. Below him, dogs barked and horses squealed. The palace’s front gate was taking a steady battering; Kasyan’s men and Chelubey’s Tatars howled to rouse the dead. The attackers’ chance for secrecy was gone; now their only hope lay in swiftness and in sowing chaos and fear. How many men had crept in through the postern-gate before Vasya gave the alarm?

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.

Vasya hurled herself forward and rolled. She came up holding the knife. Armed now, at least, and on her feet, but it hurt to breathe, and Kasyan was between her and Marya.

Kasyan drew his sword and bared his teeth. “I am going to kill you.”

Vasya had no hope; a half-trained girl against an armed man. Kasyan’s blade came slicing down and Vasya just managed to turn it with her dagger. Masha sat swaying like a sleepwalker. “Masha!” Vasya shouted frantically. “Get up! Get to the door! Go, child!” She kicked a table at Kasyan and backed up, sobbing for breath.

Kasyan cut sideways and Vasya ducked. Now it seemed that a black-cloaked figure waited in the corner. For me, she thought. He is here for me, for the last time. The sword came whistling across to cut her in two. She jumped back, barely.

For an instant, Vasya’s gaze flew again to the ghost. Tamara, behind Kasyan, had put a hand to her own throat, at the place where once a talisman had hung around Vasya’s neck. A talisman that bound her…Then Tamara’s frantic eyes shot to the child, and Vasya understood.

She dodged Kasyan’s sword, dodged again. Every strike fell closer; Vasya could barely draw breath. There was Marya, sitting stiff. In the instant before the sword fell a final time, Vasya reached for Marya and found a red-gold thing, heavy and cold beneath the child’s blouse. Vasya broke it off with a wrench—so that the metal cut into her palm and bloodied the child’s throat—and in the same motion, she whirled and flung it at the sorcerer’s face. It struck him with a splatter of gold and red light, and then fell, broken, to the floor.

Kasyan stared from it to Vasya, shock in his eyes.

Then he staggered back. His face began to change. Years seemed to rush in, as though a dam had broken. Suddenly he was transformed into an old man, skeletal, red-eyed. They stood in a room that was no magic sorcerer’s lair, but only the empty tower workroom of the Grand Princess of Moscow, dusty and smelling of wet wool and women, its inner door barred.

“Bitch!” Kasyan roared. “Bitch! You dare?” He advanced again, but now he was stumbling. His guard dropped, and Vasya had not forgotten her days under the tree with Morozko. She dodged his wavering arm, came up inside his guard, and drove the knife between his ribs.

Kasyan grunted. It was the ghost who screamed. The sorcerer bled not at all, but Tamara’s side was bleeding in the place where Vasya had stabbed Kasyan.

The ghost doubled over and crumpled to the floor.

Kasyan straightened, unwounded, and advanced again, teeth bared, ancient, unkillable. Vasya had dragged Marya bodily upright and now she backed toward the door. Marya went with her, trembling, life in her steps once more, though she uttered no sound, her eyes the eyes of a girl in a nightmare. Vasya’s ribs felt as though they would pierce through her skin with each step. Kasyan still had his sword…

“There is nowhere to go,” Kasyan whispered. “You cannot kill me. Besides, the city is on fire, you murderess. You will stay here in the tower, while your family burns.”

He saw her face and burst out laughing. The empty pit of his mouth gaped wide. “You didn’t know! Fool, not to know what happens when you release a firebird.”

Then Vasya heard the vast low roar outside, a sound like the end of the world. She thought of the flight of a firebird, unleashed on a wooden city at night.

I must kill him, she thought, if it is the last thing I do. Kasyan advanced once more, sword high. Vasya hurled Marya away from her and dodged the sweeping blade.

The words of Dunya’s fairy tale ran ridiculously through her mind: Kaschei the Deathless keeps his life inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare—

But that was only a story. There was no needle here, no egg…

Vasya’s thoughts seemed to swerve to a halt. There was only herself. And her niece. And her grandmother.

Witches, Vasya thought. We can see things that others cannot, and make faded things real.

Then Vasya understood.

She did not give herself pause to think. She hurled herself at the ghost. One hand reached out and plucked the thing she knew must be there, hanging from the gray creature’s throat. It was a jewel—or had been—it felt in her hand a little like Marya’s necklace, but fragile as an eggshell, as though years and grief had eaten it away from within.

The ghost whimpered, as though caught between agony and relief.

Then Vasya came up kneeling, holding the necklace in her hand, facing the sorcerer. Her ribs—nothing had ever hurt so much. She fought down the pain.

“Let that go,” said Kasyan. His voice had changed: gone flat and thin. He had his sword to Marya’s throat, his hand fisted in her hair. “Put it down, girl. Or the child dies.”

But behind her the ghost sighed, just the tiniest bit. “Poor immortal,” said Morozko’s voice, softer and colder and fainter than she’d ever heard it.

Vasya let out a breath of rage and relief. She had not seen him come, but now he stood, little more than a thickening of shadow, beside the ghost. He did not look at her.

“Did you think I was ever far from you?” the death-god murmured to Kasyan. “I was always a breath away: a heartbeat.”

The sorcerer tightened his grip on the sword, on Marya’s hair. He was looking at Morozko with terror and a thread of agonized longing. “What care I for you, old nightmare?” he spat. “Kill me, and the child dies first.”

“Why not go with him?” Vasya asked Kasyan softly, not taking her eyes from the blade of his sword. The tarnished necklace was warm in her hand, beating like a tiny heart. So fragile. “You put your life in Tamara. So neither of you could properly die. You could only rot. But that is finished. Better to go now, and find peace.”

“Never!” snapped Kasyan. His sword-hand was trembling. “Tamara,” he said, feverishly. “Tamara—”

A red light was trickling in from the window now, brighter and brighter. Not daylight.

Tamara stepped toward him. “Kasyan,” she said. “I loved you once. Come with me now, and be at peace.”

Staring at her like a man drowning, Kasyan didn’t seem to notice when the sword loosened in his grip. Just a little…

Vasya, with her last strength, lunged forward, seized the blade, and put her whole weight on it. He fell back, and Vasya seized Marya, pulled the child back and held her, ignoring the pain in her ribs and hands. She had cut her palms on his sword; she felt the blood begin to drip.

The sorcerer seemed to recall himself; he bared his teeth, face full of rage—

“Don’t watch,” Vasya whispered to Marya.

And she crushed the stone to fragments in her bloody fist.

Kasyan screamed. Agony in his face—and relief. “Go in peace,” Vasya told him. “God be with you.”

Then Kaschei the Deathless crumpled dead to the floor.

THE GHOST LINGERED, though her outline wavered like a flame in a strong wind. A black shadow waited beside her.

“I am sorry I screamed when I saw you,” Marya whispered unexpectedly to the ghost, her first words since being brought to the tower. “I did not mean it.”

“Your daughter had five children—Grandmother,” said Vasya. “The children also have children. We will not forget you. You saved our lives. We love you. Be at peace.”

Tamara’s lips twisted: a horrible rictus, but Vasya saw the smile in it.

Then the death-god put out a hand. The ghost, trembling, took it.

She and the death-god disappeared. But before they vanished, Vasya thought she saw a beautiful girl, with black hair and green eyes, clasped and glowing in Morozko’s arms.