Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy) (14 page)

“No!”

She lurched up to her feet and saw the fur on her hands, the black points of her nails as they sharpened into claws, and the dark tip of her nose as her face stretched forward into a canine muzzle.

Not this, please, Woden, no, not this, it can’t be this, I’m not an animal, I’m human, damn it, I’m human!

She could feel the points of her fangs slipping out over her lips, and she could feel the fur growing all over her body, scratching and rustling inside her clothes.

Another sharp crack of pain raced down her spine and she leaned back, her arms outstretched and head tilted back to howl at the bright winter sky.

But when she flopped forward again, exhausted and sweating, her arms remained suspended at her sides. She pulled at them, but they were bound tightly at the wrists. Wren looked and saw first her pale pink hand and then the rough ropes tied around her arms, lashing her to a wooden beam. She tried to pull free again, but she was tied at the ankles and waist and neck as well.

I’m not an animal. I’m myself again. What the hell is happening?

The pale winter sky was swallowed by raging thunderheads flashing with lightning. As the shadows rolled across the white landscape, Wren saw figures moving out of the corners of her eyes. People were trudging through the slush from behind her, circling her, gathering before her. They were strangers, all of them, dressed in rags and smeared with mud and soot. Men and women, and children too. They formed a filthy, silent congregation in front of her, and stared.

“Untie me, please. Someone, please let me go. What’s happening? What are you all looking at? Who are you? Please, someone untie me.”

Wren struggled against the ropes, yanking at her hands and wrenching her legs back and forth, but the ropes held firm.

The crowd parted and an old man stepped forward. A black cloak hid his body and clothes, and a slouching hood covered his head. A knotted and braided gray beard fell across his chest, and from within the folds of his hood, the man peered out at her with a single gray eye.

“Who…?” Wren’s voice faltered and she slumped against the ropes. “Lord Woden?”

“Ah, my poor sweet little Wren,” the man whispered. “Look at you now, with your little wings clipped and nowhere left to run. These are holy people, Wren, people of faith. And they will not suffer a witch to live.”

The man took up a stick from the ground and scraped his fingers over the end of it, and where he stripped away the dead bark the wood sparked and burst into flame. Wren looked down at her feet and saw the pile of kindling stacked up as high as her knees. The one-eyed man thrust his burning brand into the dark thicket on the ground, and instantly every stick and twig was dancing with yellow flames.

A tremendous wave of heat rolled up Wren’s body and a filthy column of black smoke raced up into her nose and mouth. Wren choked and shook, pulling and twisting against the ropes, and all she wanted to do was beg the silent people to help her, to cut her free, to put out the fire, but she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t even whisper. The smoke had reached deep into her chest and was crushing her lungs, and her heart was screaming as her eyes went dim.

No… Why would they do this? I never hurt them… them… wait… Who are they?

She tried to open her eyes and saw the blurry faces of the grim people around her beyond the flames.

They have no faces… They’re not real… This isn’t real!

The flames vanished, the people vanished, and the entire dark hilltop vanished. Wren crumpled to the ground, coughing and shuddering, feeling the cold smooth floor beneath her.

I’m alive. I can see.

Wren sat up, one hand pressed to her throbbing head. She squinted around at the balcony at the top of the Tower of Justice, at the view beyond the railing of the Palace of Constantine and the distant waters of the Bosporus. And standing at the railing was the witch, Baba Yaga.

A torrent of white aether blasted around and around outside of the tower, flowing past the balcony in icy waves of vapor and mist. But despite this maelstrom, the air inside the tower was perfectly still.

Aether can’t even stir the empty air. The only thing it can touch is a soul.

Wren coughed and saw the aether spilling out of her mouth. She pounded her chest as she got back up to her feet, and the world gradually felt more solid and heavy around her as the last fading claws of the nightmare slipped away, leaving her clear-minded but exhausted.

“Yaga!”

The old witch turned, her long white hair clattering quietly with the tiny bones in her braids. “You woke up? Good for you, little one. I’m impressed. A little.”

“What did you do to me?”

Yaga smiled. “You claim to be a student of the other worlds, a mistress of aether. You tell me.”

Wren swallowed and came a few steps closer to her. “You can move the aether, so you must have a rinegold object. Omar called them tuning forks, resonators, for moving aether.”

“Rinegold? You have a strange name for sun-steel, girl. And Omar? Is that your teacher?”

Wren blinked.

He must have used a different name when he knew her. Makes sense, really. It was five hundred years ago, after all.

“Yes.” She held up her right hand to display the tiny glimmer of dark gold. “I received this ring from my first mistress, Gudrun. It’s what I use to move aether.”

Yaga smiled and held up both of her arms. Four silver bracelets clattered on each of her arms, and in a narrow channel around the center of each one ran a slender golden wire. “These are what I use.”

Wren stared.

Eight of them!

She said, “And you used the aether to put me in that hell? To make me live out my own nightmares? Why?”

Yaga sighed. “Maybe you’re not as bright as I thought.”

Wren nodded slowly as she stared up at the massive aether whirlwind consuming the tower around them. “It wasn’t about me at all, was it? All this aether, all this energy… who is it for?”

“Them.” Yaga jerked her chin out at the palace below and the city beyond, a vast rippling plain of white and gray stone houses and shops, and gleaming gold churches. “I brought my precious boy here to help them win their petty war, and what do they do? Abandon him! Left him for dead on the walls of Stamballa two months ago, and did not make a single attempt to set him free. And now, now! There he is! Koschei the Deathless! The war god of Rus, the scourge of the Jochi hordes, the terror of the steppes, left screaming on a rope not one league from this place. And still they do nothing!”

The aether storm surged around them, momentarily obscuring the world behind a solid white wall of mist.

Two months ago? Wait, that’s when—

Below in the courtyard, a chorus of screams rippled outward from the base of the tower, and Wren peered down at the soldiers and servants lying on the ground, clutching their heads and curling up like terrified children wailing in the night.

“Stop it! They’re not immortal, they’re only human!” Wren wrapped her black jacket tightly around her shoulders. Insubstantial as it was, the aether was still leeching the warmth from the air. “Major Tycho and the other soldiers here, they’re only men. They’re trying to protect their homes, their families. You can’t ask them to risk everything for one man. Especially a man who can’t die. Sooner or later, Koschei will be free again. Maybe the Duchess will negotiate his freedom, or he’ll escape, or he’ll simply be set free when the war ends. He can’t die, Mistress Yaga! Your son will survive this, and you’ll see him again. You know that’s true, don’t you?”

“And until then?” The tall witch turned to glower down at the younger woman. “Until then, my son has to suffer unspeakable torments, hour after hour, day after day, just because he can’t die? Is that right? Is that fair? He may only be one man, but he is my son! My only son! And if
he
can have no peace, if
I
can have no peace, then
no one
will have any peace!”

She threw her arms up and her sun-steel bracelets rang as they crashed against her wrists, and the aether roared straight up the sides of the tower, streaming up into the late afternoon sky.

Wren stood at the railing beside her, gazing up at the mist cascading upward with all the fury of a massive waterfall.

When the sun goes down, and the temperature falls, the aether will only grow thicker all across the city. And when she can command that much aether… Woden, help these poor people.

Chapter 11. Negotiations

Salvator Fabris stood in the anteroom, exchanging glares with the Turkish guards by the office doors, and by the hallway doors, and by the windows. Each of the men in blue uniform wore a scimitar of Damascus steel, and a Numidian two-shot pistol, and an eclectic collection of mismatched daggers. The Italian sighed, wondering idly how the soldiers kept their belts from falling down under all of that weight.

“It’s been over an hour,” he said in his best Eranian to no one in particular.

None of the soldiers answered.

His left hand went to his own belt, again, and pawed uselessly at the void where his own golden rapier should have been, again. It had galled him to leave his prized possession with the chief of the Hellan armory before he left Constantia, but he knew the weapon would not be allowed into Prince Radu’s presence, and he didn’t trust the Turks to return it to him.

“The last time your ambassador came to the Palace of Constantia, he was shown into a private office where a page kept him quite content with wine and an assortment of cheeses until his meeting with the Duchess,” Salvator said loudly. “I would have thought you might show me the same courtesy, this time. But I see the war effort has strained your resources considerably. You haven’t even a single chair to spare for me, let alone for these eight valiant gentlemen who are doing such a fine job of guarding an empty room and an unarmed guest.”

The hallway door opened and the Turkish ambassador strode in. He was a rotund little man with huge soft jowls and a tiny black mustache plastered to his lip with oil. His suit was well-made but either it had been poorly measured or the ambassador had grown considerably around his middle, because his trousers and shirt were straining under his belt.

“Ah, Fabris!” he cried with a smile. “Such a pleasure to see you again, of course. I hear you have some new proposals and such to share with us, so I hurried down from the temple as quickly as I could.”

“I’m here to speak with the prince,” Salvator said. “Not you, Murat.”

“Oh, yes, of course, but Prince Radu is a very busy man. He is meeting with architects and artists from across the empire, you know. He is planning a most glorious renovation of poor Constantia. I’ve described to him its hideous state of decay and he is most eager to see it restored and rebuilt, once it is part of the empire, of course.”

“Of course.” Salvator sniffed and stared out the window at the slate rooftops of Stamballa and the gleaming domes of the Mazdan Temples. “You do realize of course that, as an Italian, I don’t give a damn about Constantia at all, and nothing you say about it is going to make me angry. I should also point out that nothing you say will make you any less of a fat pustule, or make me any less handsome.”

Murat’s smile faltered.

“Now about that chair.” Salvator peered down his nose at his counterpart and gracefully plucked at his long, silvery mustache.

Murat huffed, cleared his throat, glanced at the soldiers, and went back out into the hallway.

Another hour passed before the hallway doors opened and Prince Radu strode into the anteroom with a dozen grim-faced generals and perfumed servants trailing behind him. The Vlachian prince was a younger version of his brother, but everywhere Vlad was hard and crooked and dark, Radu was softer and straighter and brighter. He smiled easily and moved with the practiced grace of a court dancer.

Salvator performed a grandiose bow and said, “Your Highness, it is an honor and a privilege to see you again. I hope you have been well since our last meeting.”

Radu paused at the doors to the inner office. “Quite well. And you?”

“Never better, Highness.”

Radu glanced back at his retinue. “You should really handle Murat a bit more gently, you know. He’s a fine accountant, but he doesn’t have your wit.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Salvator smiled. “I’ll try to keep that in mind in the future.”

“Your little friend, the major, he is not with you?”

“He was injured this afternoon. Nothing serious, but he couldn’t join me.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. I like him very much. So, is it business or pleasure today, my friend?” Radu opened the office door and led the way inside. He tossed his coat onto the back of the chair behind the desk.

Salvator sauntered inside and several clerks and guards shuffled in behind him to stand along the walls. “Business, if you can call it that. We caught your afternoon performance by the waterfront. I imagine if we were all quiet enough, we could hear the endless encore even now.”

Radu sighed. “These damn immortals. You know, for weeks, we’ve tried to learn his secret. How does he do it? Why can’t he die? Interrogations, torture. Nothing worked, of course.”

“You want to know why he’s immortal?” Salvator shrugged. “I suppose I can see the appeal, especially for a handsome young fellow like yourself. Couldn’t you simply ask your own immortal about it? The Damascena?”

Radu smiled. “You know as well as I do that she does not serve me, does not answer to me in any way. Ask her about immortality? Ha! If I could simply
find
her, it would be a memorable day. That woman has been a mystery to the Emperors of Eran for ages.”

Salvator chuckled. “It’s good to know we have that in common. And it’s very good to know that you couldn’t pry any secrets from your prisoner.”

“Hmph.” Radu settled into his chair and glanced at the papers on his desk. “Koschei is like a stone. He’s a brute, dressed in half-rotten skins and bloody furs. The only thing of any value we found on him was this.” The prince reached inside the neck of his starched shirt and pulled out a slender black chain from which dangled a small golden pendant.