Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy) (29 page)

“Wren!” Tycho appeared at her side, fumbling with the bullets for his revolver. He snapped the gun shut and pointed it at the dead men and women. “Get behind me!”

He fired twice and two corpses slumped to the floor. But in the shadowy corners of the room, Wren’s keen fox eyes saw the dead bodies still pouring in through more and more doors by the dozens, by the hundreds. She clutched Tycho’s shoulder to steady herself as she stared at the countless dead faces stumbling toward her out of the darkness.

Aether. I need more aether! How? HOW???

And a familiar voice whispered to her, “Draw it up from the earth.”

Wren’s eyes snapped to her finger where the slender ring of Denveller gleamed with coppery gold.

“Is that… Hrist?” Wren asked. She frowned at the ring, not certain when she had last heard Hrist’s voice. She had always been the quietest of the Yslander ghosts.

“It is I,” the dead vala answered. “Draw the aether you need up from the earth using the bracelets.”

“How exactly?”

“Sit on the ground,” Hrist said. “Place your palms on the ground, and shiver your soul just as you do when you move the aether around you. But this time, imagine the shivers rippling upward through your body, like ripples on the surface of a lake when the wind blows straight across it.”

“No, not straight across,” a second voice said from the ring.

“Kara?”

“Yes, Wren. Do as Hrist says, but picture the shivers spinning around you like a water spout, rising as it spins, faster and faster. Do it now!”

Wren jerked away from Tycho and ran to the center of the office where Lady Nerissa stood calmly, though very pale, surrounded by her servants. Wren dropped to the cold floor and placed her hands on the damp tiles. Closing her eyes, she tried to forget about the yelling and the shuffling and the gun shots.

Making her own soul shiver was easy enough. Over the last few months, it had almost become a comfortable reflex from her long hours of practice with Omar’s guidance. It then took several moments of effort to make the tiny ripples in her ghost start to turn, to revolve around her, sweeping over her skin from right to left like a wave of gooseflesh, faster and faster, until she was trembling uncontrollably as though she were standing naked on a glacier, her whole body shaking as her flesh tried desperately to stay warm against the freezing elements.

“Faster!” Hrist cried.

“Faster!” Kara ordered.

Wren bore down on her chest, tightening her muscles, making herself smaller so her shivering ghost could spin ever faster. And suddenly the trembling stopped and she felt strangely warm. She knew, dimly, that her ghost was whirling within her body, spinning like a top, but spinning so fast that she could barely feel it anymore.

Wren opened her eyes.

At first, all she could see was white. Then she blinked and saw that the white was moving, flying, whirling past her face, whirling around her body. She turned her head and saw through the tiny wispy gaps in the white wall to the faces of the men and women standing around her, staring in at her in fear.

I did it.

She looked up and saw that the column of aether reached all the way up to the distant ceiling.

I really did it!

“Now use it!” Kara grumbled.

Wren rose to her feet, careful to keep her hands close to avoid touching the aether storm.

“Everyone get back!” She yelled through the white wall. “Everyone get down on the floor!”

She squinted through the whipping clouds, but couldn’t tell if anyone had heard her.

“Get down now!” she screamed.

Wren raised her arms over her head, letting the bracelets fall to her elbows. She could still feel her soul revolving within her flesh, spinning like the stars in the night sky, flying like the leaves on an autumn wind. She brought her hands together, feeling the humming vibrations in her ring and in her bracelets, and slowly she brought her hands down in front of her as she pulled the aether out of the storm cloud, drawing it in tighter and tighter into a ball of freezing white mist rolling between her hands.

As she pulled the aether down to her, the wall of the storm grew thinner, revealing a room full of people lying flat on the floor with their hands over their heads, and a few young men in the distance on their knees, still shooting at the dark figures out beyond the torches.

Wren inhaled and in one final gesture she pulled all of the aether into the whirling sphere of storm clouds trapped between her palms. Now she could see everything. The terrified people, the broken furniture, the guttering torches, and the sea of rotting faces clambering over the fallen dead to reach the huddled survivors.

Wren turned her hands so that one was below the storm-sphere and the other was above it, and with a silent prayer she ripped her hands away from each other. The aether exploded outward in a flat arc, tearing across the entire room like a pair of enormous white bullwhips snapping through the darkness. And everywhere that the aether whips struck a cold body, a soul would fly free up into the air as the corpses toppled over to the floor.

In an instant every dead body in the entire chamber was lying on the ground and a thousand pale faces and figures hovered in the air looking lost and frightened and sad, but also relieved and grateful. They looked down at her, a multitude of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, farmers and soldiers and sailors and fishers, and the ghosts smiled gently as one by one they faded away into the darkness.

Wren stood very still, staring into the shadows with her fox eyes and listening with her fox ears. But no more figures shambled through the open doors, no more frozen tongues murmured, and no more dead feet scraped over the tiled floor. Everything was still and silent, except for the dripping of the water and the purring of the torches.

“Tycho?”

The major scrambled up and dashed to her side. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. She could still feel her soul spinning, though much slower now and slower still with each passing moment. It had filled her with warmth and a wild sharpness, like lightning in her skin, but now it was fading, leaving her chilled and tired. She leaned on his shoulder slightly. “Can you please close those doors now?”

He smiled. “Yes, I think I can.”

Chapter 24. Sisters

Nadira descended the stairs slowly, her hand sliding down the cold stone wall, feeling the grain of it, the age of it, wondering how many other hands had passed over it. She wore a heavy brown robe over her borrowed clothes, a worn monk’s habit draped over a servant’s sturdy green dress. It felt strange not to be wearing trousers, feeling the air on her legs, feeling the cloth flowing around her. It stirred very, very old memories of her life in Damascus. Her first life, in the nunnery.

At the bottom of the stairs, she found a cellar. It was a long room with doors leading to other chambers, but the center of the floor directly in front of her was home to a pile of old Persian carpets and bearskin rugs flanked by three iron braziers, and on top of the mound of carpets lay an old woman with long white hair.

Nadira glanced around the space as she stepped farther in, and saw nothing of interest. No windows, no furniture, no alcoves where an enemy might be waiting to strike. She sat down on the carpets and peered at the old woman. “Wake up.”

She poked the woman. “Hey, you alive? Wake up.”

The woman didn’t move.

Nadira sighed. “Well, I can see why they left you here, at least.”

“Left?” The woman blinked and rolled her head to look at her guest. “Who are you?”

“Nadira.” She wiped her nose and sniffed violently. “I’m new around here. And you are?”

“Yaga, mother to Koschei the Deathless.”

“Oh, you’re Koschei’s mother?” Nadira smiled. “I think I met him once or twice.”

“I doubt it. He is a warrior. He does not consort with palace maids.” The white-haired woman sat up slowly.

“I’m no maid.” Nadira reached into her dress and pulled out the chain around her neck to display the little golden pendant shaped like a human heart.

Yaga plunged her own gnarled hand into her blouse and held out a matching sun-steel heart. Slowly, they both put them away.

“So,” Nadira said. “I hear you were the last ones that received Bashir’s little gift.”

“Bashir? Oh, you mean Grigori? Yes, I believe we were the last. Five hundred years ago. You?”

“Two thousand, or so.”

Yaga sneered. “Typical. He took you young and beautiful. And me? Look at this.” She waggled the loose flesh around her neck. “This, for five hundred years. Bah!”

Nadira shrugged.

“Where is everyone? Where is Wren?” Yaga asked.

“Everyone’s gone,” Nadira said. “The palace is empty. I heard them running around in the halls, and then I came out and watched them leave, scurrying like mice to get away.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know. Bashir put me in a room and told me to wait for him to come back, but he didn’t, and now everyone’s gone.”

“Bashir? Ugly name. I like Grigori better. He looks like a Grigori.” Yaga glanced away and wet her lips. “He came to me the first time when I was younger, like you, and then he went away, for years, and didn’t come back again until I was like this.”

“He came back?” Nadira snorted. “He never came to see me.”

“He’s a man. You can’t expect much from a man, especially once he’s tasted you.”

Nadira blanched. “You slept with him?”

“Didn’t you?”

“No!” Nadira shivered and let the horrid thought scamper back into some dark corner of her mind, but then another thought took its place. “Is Koschei
his
son?”

“No, no.” Yaga cackled. “Koschei’s father was a trapper, a fur trader I found half dead in the forest near my house one winter. He died, but not before he gave me my precious Koschei.”

Nadira nodded and let a long moment of silence pass between them.

“Does it change, over time?” Yaga asked. “You said it’s been a thousand years.”

“Two thousand,” Nadira said.

“Does it change?” Yaga repeated. “The way you see time, the way you move in the world, the way you feel life and death moving around you. Does it change? Ever?”

“No.” Nadira swept a few short stray hairs behind her ear, and then started picking in her ear. “Nothing changes, ever. Things come and go. Why?”

Yaga shook her head.

“So what did he want you to do for him?” Nadira asked. “I was supposed to study aether for him. I did for a while, but I lost interest. I got tired of watching people die. I still I am, but at least I’m free to waste my time how I like now.”

“Aether.” Yaga nodded. “He asked me about aether, too. And ghosts. And death. But he never came back.”

Nadira bobbed her head and stopped digging in her ear.

“I’m tired,” Yaga said. “Tired of it all. Aren’t you?”

“I thought I was.” Nadira shrugged. “But now, I’m starting to think that I’m more bored than tired.”

“Well, I’m tired,” Yaga said. “I was too old for this when he made me immortal, and now I’m five hundred years too old for this. People aren’t supposed to live this long, to think for this long, to fill themselves up with memories and feelings and nightmares for this long.”

“But there’s no way out,” Nadira said. “The only thing that can break the pendants is another piece of sun-steel, and then you’ll lose it all, your whole soul, trapped forever.”

“Trapped?” Yaga cackled, her tiny green eyes twinkling with glee. “A soul inside the sun-steel cannot escape, but it is no different from being trapped upon this earth, or in this flesh.” She reached over and pinched Nadira on the arm. “It isn’t a prison cell where you suffer and serve for all eternity. For the most part, you sleep in darkness and silence, as peaceful as the grave. From time to time, some living person touches the sun-steel and asks for your service, so you wake up, and you answer their question, and you go back to sleep again. Didn’t you know that?”

Nadira shook her head. “Sounds boring.”

“It sounds wonderful.” Yaga sighed. “Perhaps… no, but Koschei. He needs me.”

“Koschei the Deathless needs you?” Nadira laughed. “You old fool, he’s an immortal butcher. He is death and war incarnate. He doesn’t need anyone.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“I know him well enough. I was there when the Turks shot him and chained him. I saw it. I heard it,” Nadira said, staring into the crone’s eyes. “He swore to do unspeakable things to those men. Hateful, evil things. To them, and to their mothers, and to their daughters. I’ve known many men in my time, and I can tell you exactly what sort a man is by what he says about women, and I can tell you, Yaga, that your son doesn’t need you.”

“That was just war-talk. Men spout all sorts of nonsense when they fight.” Yaga frowned, her wrinkled lips folding in upon themselves. “You’re wrong about him.”

“No, I’m not.” Nadira snorted and spat across the room. The wad of phlegm smacked against the wall in the shadows. “So if it wasn’t for Koschei, you would let Bashir kill you and take your soul into his sword?”

“I would.” Yaga hesitated. “Him, or someone like him.”

“Huh.” Nadira sighed loudly. “He wants to take me back to Alexandria with him. He said he was going to teach me some new way to live. I don’t know about that. I’m good at fighting.”

“Then why stop?”

“I don’t know. It’s not the same anymore. Or it is the same. Exactly the same. Bashir said I should see the world and see how other people live,” Nadira said.

“Or maybe, you could see the world to see how other people fight,” Yaga said. “It’s foolish to deny your nature. But it’s just as foolish to be a slave to your nature.”

Nadira pouted. “Maybe. I’ll have to think about it, I guess.”

“Think all you like,” Yaga said. “You have all the time in the world.”

Nadira nodded, and after a moment she stood up. “I think I’ll get going. It’s a big world out there. I’ve got a lot of walking to do.”

“There are faster ways to go than walking.”

“Faster, but not better.” Nadira paused at the bottom of the steps and looked back at the white-haired crone. “We probably won’t meet again. Take care of yourself.”