Prince Ivan (11 page)

There had been no mention of great beauty, but then Akimov had been thinking financially rather than romantically. Ivan would certainly have remembered Mar’ya Morevna’s style and titles had they been mentioned. He was accustomed to such things, titles said something about those who carried them, but usually such titles were governed by some degree of accuracy. “So what if she calls herself ‘
the
fairest
Princess
in
all
the
Russias
.’” He couldn’t help the sceptical edge in his voice. “I could always call myself ‘
the
wisest
Prince
’, and who’d believe that?”

Katya looked at him, lips pressed together as she valiantly restrained only the good God knew what sort of remark. Then she controlled herself, smiled like a sister and said, “Everyone else calls her by that title. She doesn’t. She calls herself by her name and by nothing else. Mar’ya Koldunovna Morevna. That’s all.”

“That’s enough,” said Fenist, and his voice wasn’t one inviting questions or quibbles. “Her father, God grant him rest, was an enchanter as skilled as my own. Both did only good, and both taught the Art to their children. Mar’ya Morevna needs no titles than those she was born with. She grew into the others.”

“Ah,” said Ivan, as carefully non-committal as he could manage, and let the matter drop as he began to talk of other things.

*

He stayed with his sister Katya and her husband Fenist the Falcon for three cheerful days and three comfortable nights, then judged it right and proper to take his leave, having learned he was expected further on. No rider had entered or left the kremlin in those three days, but Ivan knew well enough that his brothers-in-law had no need of horses if they had need of haste. For his own part
he
needed one, so he saddled up grey Burka, secured all his weapons and gear, and made his farewells.

“God guard you, my brother,” they both said, and all the many other words exchanged at such a leave-taking. But then Prince Fenist the Falcon came closer, and laid his hand on Burka’s reins.

“I would beg a gift from you, Prince Ivan,” he said, strangely formal, “and give a warning in return.” Ivan glanced towards his sister Katya and noticed Fenist had taken care to leave her out of earshot when he spoke.

“Ask, and give.”

The Falcon set formality aside at once, leaning close against the horse’s neck so as not to raise his voice. “We haven’t seen you for almost a year, Vanya, and who knows what the next year will bring. Leave us your silver eating-knife as a keepsake, to remember you by.”

Ivan was puzzled but reluctant as ever to ask questions of a sorcerer, questions that received only smiles or oblique and evasive replies, so he took the knife from its case on his belt and handed it over. Fenist gave him another to take its place, all sharp and bright and gold, then looked again at his wife to ensure that she still couldn’t hear him.

“Beware,” he said, “of Koshchey the Undying. Now ride on.”

Fenist the Falcon stepped back, slapped Burka on the rump, and then he and Katya stood by the gate of their palace, waving, until Ivan could see them no more.

*

Ivan rode on and east, until, as evening approached, he came to a village. It was the first he had seen since leaving Khorlov, and though the people who came out to watch his approach were definitely peasants in cross-gartered trousers and woven birch-bark shoes, their houses were cut grey stone as impressive as the town-mansions of his father’s lesser lords. Carved into each wall and painted bright blue and silver was the outline of a falcon.

Ivan spent that night in the headman’s house, gossiping with strangers as he hadn’t been able to do before. These people weren’t timid, nervous hunters, but well-fed, well-protected and as sturdy as their houses. They told him of their lord, Prince Fenist the Falcon, and of his beautiful bride brought from a far country. Ivan smiled; he hadn’t given more than his name, and that he was a traveller. After telling them news and gossip from distant lands – which, though far from current, was much enjoyed for its novelty – he sat quietly, listened carefully and let them talk. He felt comfortably certain from their appearance and evident prosperity that they were telling him the truth, rather than what they might want to have reported back. Even so, being peasants, they told him little more than he already knew.

“Prince Fenist is a fine lord,” said one. “Have you admired the houses that he builds for us?”

“Your Prince builds them himself? With his own hands?”

The peasant laughed. “God be good to you, sir! Yes indeed, as I light this candle.” He furrowed his brow in concentration, and after a moment the candle-wick sputtered, sparked, and put forth a tall yellow flame – whereupon the peasant muttered under his breath and sucked blistered fingers. “Prince Fenist does it better than that,” he said, grinning, and poured another cup of
kvas
.

*

Ivan rode onward and eastward for thrice three days, and now the peasant villages were dotted here and there all across the steppe. Where once he might have ridden from dawn until dusk without seeing a single hut, now he couldn’t ride for more than two hours together without at least one village and perhaps two, visible out in the distance. He stopped in one or another every night, paying for hospitality in the same currency as before, news and gossip, old tales and new songs. What had been impossibly outdated in Khorlov was fresh and exciting out here.

Then the signs painted on the houses began to change, so he saw fewer falcons and more eagles, and the peasants talked less of trade in stone from the high mountains, and more of trade in leather, furs and cattle from the wide steppes, until a day came when he no longer saw the falcon any more.

At noon on that day, he saw another palace and its kremlin in the dim distance. This one was built of red stone and roofed with golden-yellow tiles, so that he knew at once who lived there. The gate of the kremlin was painted deep red, the nails driven into its wood were capped with solid gold and, growing tall beside the gate, was a sturdy oak tree with an Eagle perched in its topmost branches. Ivan reined in his grey horse and dismounted, saluting the Eagle as it flew down, struck three times on the ground, and became Prince Vasiliy Orlov.

“Wealth to you, Prince Ivan!” he said, embracing Ivan with his great arms until all the joints squeaked, “and may God give you grace!”

“Stronger ribs would do,” said Ivan, gasping somewhat, with his face near the colour of Prince Vasiliy’s coat. The Eagle Prince roared a loud laugh and clapped Ivan between the shoulders in such good fellowship that it knocked out what breath remained. Once his brother-in-law stopped coughing and his horse was taken to the stables, Vasiliy brought him into the palace where Yelizaveta waited to greet them both. She too threw her arms about him, and if Katya had learnt some gentle speech from her husband the Falcon, it was plain that Liza had learnt how to hug from the Eagle. At least she had the patience to restrain all but her most immediate questions till later, so that it was no more than ten minutes before Ivan escaped to his rooms in the tower, and thence to the steam-bath to wash before dinner – and despite the creaking in all of his joints and ribs, he grinned all the way there.

*

“Mar’ya Morevna is a strong woman,” said Vasiliy, paying her the highest compliment he knew, “not only strong of will and mind, but strong of body too.” Tsarevich Ivan lifted an eyebrow. He had little patience with strength right at the minute, for after Vasya’s greeting he had taken strong steam for an hour and his ribs were still aching.

“She’s as beautiful as the sun in the morning,” said Yelizaveta. “The fairest Princess in all the Russias.”

“Excepting present company and her sisters,” Ivan corrected her gallantly, well aware of the moat.

“No indeed!”

The vehemence of Lizochka’s denial was surprising: he had known his sisters far longer than their husbands, and it was rare indeed that they – or in his experience, any other man, woman or child – would refuse a compliment honestly meant. Hearing all this was unusual indeed, and as Liza said more about Mar’ya Morevna’s beauty, and how much superior it was over that of other women, he found himself growing more and more intrigued with this mysterious Tsarevna. Ivan didn’t make such good company at dinner as he might otherwise have done, for he was lost in thought from that moment until he laid his head on the pillow and slept. But Liza and her husband Vasiliy the Eagle didn’t mind; instead they looked at his dreamy face, and then at one another, and they smiled.

The next day he was better company, and for the days after that while he remained a guest with them. On the third day, while he prepared his horse for departure, Prince Vasiliy came to him in the stable, and asked for his silver eating-fork as a keepsake. Ivan gave it willingly, and received a gold one in exchange, but once he replaced it where the silver fork had been he looked long and hard at the Eagle.

“Well, Vasya,” he said quietly, buckling a girth-strap as though the matter didn’t interest him, “I suppose now you’ll warn me to beware of Koshchey the Undying just the way Fenik did, a warning without explanation. Yes?”

“Almost.” The big man spoke quietly, without his usual bluff heartiness, and that was enough to make Ivan pay closer attention. “Consider the warning given. As for the explanation, it’s not much. Fenist the Falcon might have given it, but your sister Katya was close by. Had she heard, she would fret without need. And you might have forgotten.”

Of
course
Vasya
would
know
about
that
, thought Ivan. His skill at forgetting things had been a byword in the kremlin of Khorlov since he’d been a small boy, and an intermittent source of teasing by his sisters when they were unable to think of any more original torments.
The
sorcerer’s
sons
have
their
own
ways
of
keeping
in
touch
. He abandoned his pretence of disinterest completely, gave the girth one final tug and came out of Burka’s stall. “What would she have to fret about, needless or otherwise?”

“Koshchey,” said Vasya simply. “What Fenik should have told you is that he’s a wizard.”

“And you’re a wizard. At least the child of one. So are Fenist and Mikhail – and from I’ve been hearing, Mar’ya Morevna’s another. Thank you, Vasya, but if I’m related by marriage to three sorcerer’s sons, and been recommended by all three to marry an enchanter’s daughter, then I doubt I should worry too much about Koshchey the Undying. For all I know, he’s another relative!”

Vasiliy curled his lip in disgust. “I hope not. He’s a necromancer, a dabbler with corpses and with worse than corpses. Nobody in their right mind would want to be related to that, by marriage or any other means.”

Ivan said nothing, but he stepped past his brother-in-law and out into the sunlight with rather more haste than he intended. A small shiver had trickled down his spine like a drop of ice-water, and for the merest instant the stable had seemed darker than it had any reason to be. All of it utterly foolish, of course, and just to be laughed at later, with a glass of good wine in one hand. And yet…

And yet Ivan couldn’t put from his mind how he felt when the roof of Khorlov’s kremlin tore open, and sorcerous fire came stabbing through a rip in solid stone to blaze across the floor. A year ago he would have dismissed the shiver as a reaction to some movement of air, and the darkness to a shadow crossing the low sun. A year ago ‘
High
Magic
’ were just words in a book. But so were ‘
blood
’ and ‘
pain
’ and ‘
death
’, and they were real enough.

The comforting weight of Prince Vasiliy’s big hand settled on his shoulder and Ivan shook his head. It wasn’t a rejection of the Eagle’s reassuring gesture, but more the way a man jerks his head after swimming to get rid of water in his ears. Ivan did it without thinking, as if trying to shake grim thoughts from his mind. The warmth of the clear blue day was doing something to warm his mood as well, and when he turned back towards his brother-in-law and the stable there was an expression very like a smile back on his face.

“I don’t plan to be related to him at all,” he said, “or even meet him, if it comes to that. From what you and Liza tell me of Mar’ya Morevna, when I encounter her there’ll be plenty to think about.” Ivan looked at Vasiliy, then grinned and cocked his head to one side. “Assuming this isn’t all a joke…?”

“Why not wait, and see for yourself,” said Vasiliy. “Now come, say good-bye to Lizochka, and be on your way. Prince Mikhail the Raven and your sister Yelena are already waiting for you.”

Prince Vasiliy’s words struck Ivan as amusing, that with yet another journey of several days ahead of him, he should hurry to get started because he was expected at the other end of it. It seemed that urgency took on a whole new meaning to someone able to fly the distance involved. Ivan grinned again, and leaned forward to pat his mount on the neck. Burka was a good horse, but while his talents were many, flying wasn’t one of them.

*

He rode eastward, always eastward, for many days, always keeping his eyes open for the villages that dotted the steppe, so small in that vast emptiness that it was easy to believe they weren’t there at all. And then he found one of the monasteries that High Steward Strel’tsin had spoken of. Dmitriy Vasil’yevich had scarcely done it justice when he described it as a wooden building. The walls and Holy Gates were handsomely plastered and painted, yet ordinary enough; however, the church inside wasn’t ordinary at all.