by Naomi Novik
I jerked away from his hand and his condescension both. “I’m not the one being shortsighted,” I told Kasia, fuming, as we hurried across the courtyard to seek Alosha out at her forge.
But Alosha only said, “I warned you,” grim but without heat. “The power in the Wood isn’t some blind hating beast; it can think and plan, and work towards its own ends. It can see into the hearts of men, all the better to poison them.” She took the sword from her anvil and plunged it into the cold water; steam billowed in great gusts like the breath of some monstrous beast. “If there wasn’t any corruption, you might have guessed there was something else at work.”
Sitting next to me, Kasia raised her head. “Is—is there something else at work in me?” she asked, unhappily.
Alosha paused and glanced at her. I found myself holding my breath, silent; then Alosha shrugged. “Isn’t this bad enough? You freed, then the queen freed, and now all of Polnya and Rosya ready to go up in flames? We can’t spare the men they’re sending to the front,” she added. “If we could, they would already have been there. The king is stripping the kingdom bare, and Rosya will have to do the same to meet us. It’ll be a bad harvest this year for all of us, win or lose.”
“And that’s what the Wood wanted, all along,” Kasia said.
“One of the things it wanted,” Alosha said. “I’ve no doubt it would gladly have eaten Agnieszka and Sarkan if it had the chance, and then it could have devoured the rest of the valley overnight. But a tree isn’t a woman; it doesn’t bear a single seed. It scatters as many of them as it can, and hopes for some of them to grow. That book was one; the queen was one. She should have been sent away at once, and you with her.” She turned back to the forge. “Too late to mend that now.”
“Maybe we should just go straight home,” I said to Kasia, and tried to ignore the longing rising in me like a swell just at the thought, that involuntary pull. I wanted to believe myself, saying, “There’s nothing more to do here. We’ll go home, we can help burning the Wood. We can raise a hundred men out of the valley at least—”
“A hundred men,” Alosha said to her anvil, with a snort. “You and Sarkan and a hundred men can do some damage, I’ve no doubt, but you’ll pay for every inch of ground you get. And meanwhile the Wood will have twenty thousand men slaughtering each other on the banks of the Rydva.”
“The Wood will have that anyway!” I said. “Can’t you do something?”
“I’m doing it,” Alosha said, and put the sword back into the fire again. She’d done it four times already just while we’d been sitting here with her, which I realized didn’t make any sense. I hadn’t seen swords made before, but I’d watched the smith at work often enough: we’d all liked to watch as children while he hammered out scythes, and pretend he was making swords; we would pick up sticks and have mock battles around the steaming forge. So I knew you weren’t meant to forge a blade over and over, but Alosha took the sword out again and put it back on the anvil, and I realized she was hammering spells into the steel: her lips moved a little while she worked. It was a strange kind of magic, because it wasn’t finished in itself; she was catching up a dangling spell, and she left it hanging again before she plunged it once more into the cold water.
The dark blade came out dripping, glazed with water. It had a strange and hungry feeling. When I looked into it I saw a long fall into some deep dry crack in the earth, tumbling away onto sharp rocks. It wasn’t like the other enchanted swords, the ones Marek’s soldiers had carried; this thing wanted to drink life.
“I’ve been forging this blade for a century,” Alosha said, holding it up. I looked at her, glad to take my eyes away from the thing. “After the Raven died, and Sarkan went to the tower, I began it. There’s less iron than spellcraft in it by now. The sword only remembers the shape it once had, and it won’t last for longer than a single stroke, but that’s all it will need.”
She put it back in the forge again, and we watched it sitting in the bath of flames, a long tongue of shadow among them. “The power in the Wood,” Kasia said slowly, her eyes on the fire. “Is it something you can kill?”
“This sword can kill anything,” Alosha said, and I believed her. “As long as we can make it put out its neck. But for that,” she added, “we’ll need more than a hundred men.”
“We could ask the queen,” Kasia said suddenly. I blinked at her. “I know there are lords who owe her fealty on her own—a dozen of them tried to come and pay her homage, while we were locked up together, though the Willow wouldn’t let them in. She must have soldiers she could give us, instead of sending them to Rosya.”
And she, at least, would surely want the Wood struck down. Even if Marek wouldn’t listen to me, or the king, or anyone else in the court, perhaps she would.
So Kasia and I went down to hover outside the great council-chamber: the queen was there again, a part of the war-council now. The guards would have let me inside: they knew who I was, now. They watched me sidelong out of the corners of their eyes, nervous and interested both, as though I might erupt with more sorcery at any moment, like contagious boils. But I didn’t want to go in; I didn’t want to get caught up in the arguments of the Magnati and the generals planning how best to murder ten thousand men, and harvest glory while the crops rotted in the fields. I wasn’t going to put myself into their hands as another weapon to aim.
So we waited outside and held back against the wall instead while the council came pouring out, a torrent of lords and soldiers. I had thought the queen would come behind them, with servants to help her walk. But she didn’t: she came out in the center of the crowd. She was wearing the circlet, Ragostok’s circlet, the one he’d been working on. The gold caught the light, and the rubies shone above her golden hair. She wore red silk, too, and all of the courtiers gathered around her, sparrows around a cardinal bird. It was the king who came behind the rest, talking in low voices with Father Ballo and two councilors, an afterthought.
Kasia looked at me. We would have had to shove through the crowd to get to her—brazen, but we could have done it; Kasia could have made a way for us. But the queen looked so different. The stiffness seemed to have faded, and her silence. She was nodding to the lords around her, she was smiling; she was one of them again, one of the actors moving on the stage, as graceful as any of them. I didn’t move. She glanced aside for a moment, almost towards us. I didn’t try to catch her eye; instead I caught Kasia’s arm, and pressed her farther back into the wall with me. Something held me like the instinct of a mouse in a hole, hearing the breath of the owl’s wing overhead.
The guards fell in after the court with last looks at me; the hallway stood empty. I was trembling. “Nieshka,” Kasia said. “What is it?”
“I’ve made a mistake,” I said. I didn’t know just what, but I’d done something wrong; I felt the dreadful certainty of it sinking down through me, like watching a penny falling away down a deep well. “I’ve made a mistake.”
Kasia followed me through the hallways, the narrow stairs, almost running by the end, back to my small room. She was watching me, worried, while I shut the door hard behind us and leaned against it, like a child hiding. “Was it the queen?” Kasia said.
I looked at her standing in the middle of my room, firelight golden on her skin and through her hair, and for one horrible moment she was a stranger wearing Kasia’s face: for one moment I’d brought the dark in with me. I whirled away from her to the table. I’d brought a few branches of pine into my bedroom, to have them nearby. I took a handful of needles and burned them on the hearth and breathed in the smoke, the sharp bitter smell, and I whispered my cleansing spell. The strangeness faded. Kasia was sitting on the bed watching me, unhappy. I looked up at her miserably: she’d seen suspicion in my eyes.
“It’s no more than I’ve thought myself,” she said. “Nieshka, I should—maybe the queen, maybe both of us, should be—” Her voice shook.
“No!” I said. “No.” But I didn’t know what to do. I sat on the heart
h, panting, afraid, and then I turned abruptly to the fire, cupping my hands, and I called up my old practice illusion, the small and determinedly thorny rose, the vining branches of the rosebush climbing sluggishly over the sides of the fire-screen. Slowly, singing, I gave it perfume, and a handful of humming bees, and leaves curling at the edges with ladybugs hiding; and then I made Sarkan on the other side of it. I called up his hands beneath mine: the long spindly careful fingers, the smooth-rubbed pen calluses, the heat of his skin radiating; and he took shape on the hearth, sitting beside me, and we were sitting in his library, too.
I was singing my short illusion spell back and forth, feeding a steady silver thread of magic to it. But it wasn’t like the heart-tree had been, the day before. I was looking at his face, his frown, his dark eyes scowling at me, but it wasn’t really him. It wasn’t just an illusion that I needed, not just the image of him or even a smell, or a sound, I realized. That wasn’t why the heart-tree had lived, down in that throne room. It had grown out of my heart, out of fear and memory and the churning of horror in my belly.
The rose was cupped in my hands. I looked at Sarkan on the other side of the petals, and let myself feel his hands cupped around mine, the places where his fingertips just barely brushed against my skin and where the heels of my palms rested in his. I let myself remember the alarming heat of his mouth, the crush of his silk and lace between our bodies, his whole length against me. And I let myself think about my anger, about everything I’d learned, about his secrets and everything he’d hidden; I let go of the rose and gripped the edges of his coat to shake him, to shout at him, to kiss him—
And then he blinked and looked at me, and there was fire glowing somewhere behind him. His cheek was grimy with soot, flecks of ash in his hair, and his eyes were reddened; the fire on the hearth crackled, and it was the distant crackle of fire in the trees. “Well?” he demanded, hoarse and irritated, and it was him. “We can’t do this for long, whatever you are doing; I can’t have my attention divided.”
My hands clenched on the fabric: I felt stitches going ragged and flecks of stinging ash on my hands, ash in my nostrils, ash in my mouth. “What’s happening?”
“The Wood’s trying to take Zatochek,” he said. “We’ve been burning it back every day, but we’ve lost a mile of ground already. Vladimir has sent what soldiers he could spare from the Yellow Marshes, but it’s not enough. Is the king sending any men?”
“No,” I said. “He’s—they’re starting another war with Rosya. The queen said Vasily of Rosya gave her to the Wood.”
“The queen spoke?” he said sharply, and I felt that same uneasy drumbeat of fear rise up in my throat again.
“But the Falcon put a spell of seeing on her,” I said, arguing with myself as much as him. “They tried her with Jadwiga’s shawl. There wasn’t anything in her. There wasn’t a trace, none of them could see any shadow—”
“Corruption isn’t the only tool the Wood has,” Sarkan said. “Ordinary torment can break a person just as well. It might have let her go deliberately, broken to its service but untainted to any magical sight. Or it might have planted something on her instead, or nearby. A fruit, a seed—”
He stopped and turned his head, seeing something I couldn’t. He said sharply, “Let go!” and jerked his magic loose; I fell backwards off the hearth and struck against the floor, jarred painfully. The rosebush crumbled to ash on the hearth and vanished, and he was gone with it.
Kasia sprang to catch me, but I was already scrambling to my feet. A fruit, a seed. His words had sparked fear in me. “The bestiary,” I said. “Ballo was going to try to purify it—” I was still dizzy, but I turned and ran from the room, urgency rising in me. Ballo had been going to tell the king about the book. Kasia ran beside me, steadying my first wobbly steps.
The screaming reached us as we plunged down the first narrow servants’ staircase. Too late, too late, my feet told me as they slapped against the stone. I couldn’t tell where the screams came from: they were far away and echoing strangely through the castle hallways. I ran in the direction of the Charovnikov, past two staring maids who’d shrunk back against the walls, crumpling the folded linens in their arms. Kasia and I wheeled to go down the second staircase to the ground level just as a white burst of fire crackled below, throwing sharp-edged shadows against the walls.
The blinding light faded, and then I saw Solya go flying across the mouth of the stairwell, smashing into a wall with a wet-sack noise. We scrambled down and saw him sprawled up against the opposite wall, not moving, his eyes open and dazed, blood running from his nose and mouth, and bloody shallow slashes dragged across his chest.
The thing that crawled out of the corridor to the Charovnikov nearly filled the space from floor to ceiling. It was less a beast than a horrible conglomeration of parts: a head like a monstrous dog, one enormous eye in the middle of its forehead and the snout full of jagged sharp edges that looked like knives instead of teeth. Six heavy-muscled legs with clawed lion’s feet sprouted from its swollen body, all of it armored in scales like a serpent. It roared and came rushing towards us so quickly I almost couldn’t think to move. Kasia seized me and dragged me back up the stairs, and the thing doubled on itself and thrust its head up through the opening of the stairwell, snapping and biting and howling, a green froth boiling out of its mouth. I shouted, “Polzhyt!” stamping its head away, and it shrieked and jerked back into the hallway as a spurt of fire burst up from the stairs and scorched across its muzzle.
Two heavy bolts flew into its side with solid, meaty thumps: it twisted, snarling. Behind it, Marek threw aside a crossbow; a terrified gawky young equerry at his side had pulled a spear down off the wall for him and was clutching it, gaping at the monster; he barely remembered to let go as Marek snatched it out of his hands. “Go raise the guard!” he shouted at the boy, who flinched and ran. Marek jabbed the spear at the monster’s head.
The doors to a chamber hung crazily open behind him, white and black flagstones splattered with blood and three men sprawled dead, nobles in slashed clothes. The white, frightened face of an old man stared out from beneath the table in the room: the palace secretary. Two palace guards lay dead farther back along the hallway, as if the monster had come bounding from deeper inside the castle and had smashed open the doors to get at the men inside.
Or perhaps to get at one man, in particular: it snarled at the poking spear, but then it turned away from Marek; it swung its heavy head around, teeth baring, deliberate, towards Solya. He was staring at the ceiling still, his eyes dazed, his fingers slowly scrabbling over the stone floor as though trying to find a grip on the world.
Before the thing could pounce, Kasia flung herself past me in one enormous leap down the stairs, stumbling and thudding into the wall and righting herself. She grabbed another spear off the wall and pushed it into the beast’s face. The dog-thing snapped at the spear’s haft, then bellowed: Marek had sunk his spear into its flanks. There were boots, shouts coming, more guards running and the cathedral bells ringing suddenly in warning; the page had raised the alarm.
I saw all of those things, and could say afterwards that they happened, but I didn’t feel them happening in the moment. There was only the hot stinking breath of the monster coming up the staircase, and blood, and my heart jumping; and knowing I had to do something. The beast howled and turned back to Kasia and Solya, and I stood up on the stairs. The bells were ringing and ringing. I heard them above my head, where a high window looked out from the stairwell onto a narrow slice of sky, the bright pearl-grey haze of a cloudy summer day.
I stretched up my hand and called, “Kalmoz!” Outside the clouds squeezed together into a dark knot like a sponge, a cloudburst that blew water in spattering on me, and a bolt of lightning cracked in through the window and jumped into my hands like a bright hissing snake. I clutched it, blinded, white light and a high singing whine all around me; I couldn’t breathe. I flung it down the stairs towards the beast. Thunder roared around me and I
went flying back, sprawling painfully across the landing, smoke and a bitter sharp smell crackling.
I lay flat, shaking all over, tears running out of my eyes. My hands were stinging and painful, and smoke was coming off them like morning fog. I couldn’t hear anything. When my eyes cleared, the two maids were bending over me, terrified, their mouths moving soundlessly. Their hands spoke for them, gentle, helping me up. I staggered up to my feet. At the foot of the stairs, Marek and three guards were at the monster’s head, prodding it warily. It lay smoking and still, a blasted outline charred black against the walls around its body. “Put a spear in its eye to be sure,” Marek said, and one of the guards thrust his in deep into the one round eye, already milky. The body didn’t twitch.
I limped down the stairs, one hand on the wall, and sank shakily down on the steps above its head. Kasia was helping Solya to his feet; he put the back of his hand to his face and wiped away the maze of blood over his mouth, panting, staring down at the beast.
“What the hell is that thing?” Marek demanded. It looked even more unnatural, dead: limbs that didn’t fit with one another hanging askew from the body, as if some mad seamstress had sewn together bits of different dolls.
I stared at it from above, the dog-muzzle shape, the sprawled loose legs, the thick serpent’s body, and a memory slowly crept in, a picture I’d seen yesterday, out of the corner of my eye, trying not to read. “A tsoglav,” I said. I stood up again, too fast, and had to catch myself on the wall. “It’s a tsoglav.”
“What?” Solya said, looking up at me. “What is a—”
“It’s from the bestiary!” I said. “We have to find Father Ballo—” I stopped and looked at the beast, the one last filmy staring eye, and suddenly I knew we weren’t going to find him. “We have to find the book,” I whispered.