A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  He didn’t have to wait for very long.

  A head shot up out of the water, shaking long, silvery-blond hair out of her eyes. “Bread!” the Rusalka exclaimed. “Do I smell fresh bread?”

  “From today’s baking,” Sasha replied. Rusalkas, although technically ghosts, still ate. It was a contradiction that Sasha had never been able to reason out, and so he had never bothered to try. “A bargain for a little information. Sorry I don’t have butter.”

  The Rusalka jumped out of the water and seized the loaf of bread, sitting right down on the stone to tear a chunk off and start eating. She paused with the bite halfway to her mouth. “What sort of information?” she asked.

  “Is there anything you know of that might be stirring to the north that would attract the attention of the King of the Sea?” he asked.

  Frogs punctuated the silence. “Hmm.” She ate her first piece while she thought.

  “Just guesses would be fine,” he said encouragingly.

  “Well…I would have mentioned Katschei the Deathless, except that he didn’t manage to live up to his name,” she said, smirking. “His castle is vacant, but I doubt that anything would have moved into it. He was a vile thing, and would have left it completely filled with traps of all sorts.” She shook her head. “It is not a place I would venture into, no matter what treasures are there.”

  He made a mental note of that anyway. If something was strong enough, clever enough, to get past the traps, it would certainly be strong and clever enough to capture Katya. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Baba Yaga roams up there.”

  He bit his lip over that one. Baba Yaga never was, and Traditionally never would be, the sort to stir up the kind of trouble that would get the Sea King’s attention. Not that she didn’t stir up trouble! And not that she wasn’t absolutely deadly! But she didn’t ever involve herself in the matters of Kingdoms. He suspected that she just didn’t enjoy the sort of impersonal misery that conquest and subjugation created. She performed her evil one person at a time.

  So, probably not Baba Yaga, though it was entirely possibly that Baba Yaga could have ambushed Katya on the way to her goal. “Anything else?”

  The loaf was half gone. The Rusalka must have been starved for the taste of bread. He made a mental note to see that she got it more often. “They say Chernobog is seen there.” She looked up then, and shivered, eyes going opaque.

  He didn’t blame her. Chernobog was said to be a god, though who knew? It was impossible to say. Whatever, the Dark One was very, very powerful, and was interested in the lives of mortals, and was entirely arbitrary so far as Sasha could make out. You could not tell what he would and would not do. Like many ancient spirits, he acted only as he pleased, and in tune with some balance and some logic that only he and The Tradition understood or could predict.

  Though if it was Chernobog, the Dark One would not be acting directly, but rather through someone else. He had no interest in being a king himself—for a spirit as powerful as he was, that was a distinct demotion—but oh, how he loved to meddle in the lives of mortals! Meddle, then stand back and watch and laugh. No use appealing to him either; he let you get yourself out of whatever situation his meddling had put you in.

  The Rusalka finished the last of the bread, and licked her fingers bare of crumbs. Nearby, a nightingale began to sing, adding his voice to the frogs.

  “I cannot think of anything else,” she said. “Although there are plenty of evil things there. Plenty. More than enough to give your Katya a nasty surprise.”

  He nodded. “But that is a start. Well—” He looked up at the moon. “I should go while there is light to ride by.”

  She shook her head. “No. Stay.” At his askance look, she smiled. “I have no designs on you! I scent the Sea King’s daughter about you and I have no desire to challenge her! No, you can safely sleep here. I will guard your rest.” Then she added, softly, “You are a good man, Sasha.”

  He flushed. He did try to be. Even if he didn’t know The Tradition as well as he did, he’d have been the sort to share his bread with an old beggar woman….

  “Thank you,” he said, just as softly.

  Then she laughed. And shook back her hair, and winked at him “And you are a Fortunate Fool! Such are always finding help in unexpected places!”

  And so, somewhat to his own bemusement, Sasha unsaddled his horse and left it tethered to graze on the verge, while he rolled himself up in his cloak and slept through the night to the sound of frogs and a lovestruck nightingale, beneath the protection of a Rusalka.

  * * *

  Katya scanned the battlements carefully from her place in the Jinn’s garden. The other girls—and there were more of them now, for the Jinn had added a fifth maiden to his collection—were all in their rock-walled room. The new one might be very useful. She was a Wolf-girl, the opposite of a werewolf, a young Wolf-bitch who could take the form of a human at will—legends said it was by taking off her skin, but Katya had watched her, and she merely shape-shifted. She was very like the bear-people in that way, or a real werewolf, as opposed to the swan maiden who was human to begin with and took the form of a swan by putting on the feather cloak. As a Wolf, the girl was able to sniff out things that the others could not see nor sense. Like drafts or fresh air where neither should be. Katya had her exploring the cellars and dungeon as much as she could without getting caught.

  The garden had never been all that lovely when Katschei the Deathless had lived here; he had been much inclined to dark and poisonous plants. In his absence though, most of those, needing nurturing, had died. So the weeds, and what good plants that once had flourished here and had somehow survived, had taken over. And then, just as the garden was at its most tangled, someone had taken a clumsy hand to it.

  The Jinn, she supposed, was the one who had ordered some of that cleaned up. The fountain flowed clear, bushes and even trees had been cut back, and paths were newly graveled. But the Jinn clearly could not tell weeds from flowers, and the weeds were slowly choking out the flowers, in all but a few places. Granted, some of the weeds did look very lush and green, but stinging nettles were not what anyone would want in a garden, even if they did look like mint.

  She sat next to one of those places where the flowers were winning, a bed of primroses that had completely taken over whatever else had been in there with them. The delicate pink blossoms, only faintly scented, spilled out over the cobbles containing them, looking cool and lively in what to her was dreadful heat.

  The heat was enough to flatten anyone used to the climate of the north as she and the other girls were. The devastation this Jinn could wreak here if he spread his desert was appalling. The heat alone would kill many animals—and people, too.

  She was here, not because she wanted to be, but because she was both testing something and waiting for her moment to finally act to get some help.

  What she was testing was her own ability to tell when the Jinn was moving about invisibly. After a good deal of observation she had realized that like the snow maiden, she, too, could tell when the creature was spying on his captives and his own men invisibly. There was a kind of hum in the back of her mind, like the buzz of a fly that would not land, whenever he was about. That hum did not go away when he was invisible. And the more she thought about it, the more certain she became that this buzz was because the Jinn did not belong here. Perhaps what she sensed was his dissonance with The Tradition here, like an improperly fitting wheel, or the grating of a movable joint that had not been smoothed.

  So, that was something. He could not watch her without her knowing that he was about. So long as she did not hear that hum, she could operate knowing that he could not find out about it.

  She waited until the hum went away—and actually, she watched him go. He gathered one of those whirlwinds about himself and lofted into the sky, the bizarre thing forming a kind of brown blot against the blue. When he was out of sight, and the hum was gone for a bit, she took her waterproof walle
t of oiled eelskin and unsealed the paraffin holding the edge shut. From it she took her paper crane. The Jinn had taken everything from her that looked like a weapon, but not this. He probably thought it was a lover’s token.

  It might not be a bad thought to moon over it as if it were when he was about.

  Carefully, she wiped her hands and forehead with a soft cloth, to avoid dampening the paper or dropping sweat on it. She unfolded the bird, and with a bit of lead stolen from a window, wrote swiftly on its interior. She used a tiny bit of magic of her own, the magic that allowed her to speak and read in any language in any land. Whoever got this would see it as the script of his or her own native tongue.

  Captives being held by Jinn at Castle of Katschei. Jinn plans conquest. Champions needed. Follow bird.

  That was all she had room for.

  She had thought, and thought hard, about sending for Sasha—and she would, when the bird came back. But although he was a Fortunate Fool, he was no warrior, and it was warriors who were needed here now. The Jinn had to be stopped. Not just for the sake of the Sea King, but for everything else hereabouts. If the Jinn could transform one piece of forest to desert with only the power at his personal disposal, what could he do with the nearly unlimited power he would have if he took many folk captive? He could lay waste to entire Kingdoms without ever leaving the castle grounds. The more she thought about it, the more alarmed she became.

  And she could not send the bird to her father, not directly. It was, after all, paper. Nor were any of his forces useful for this—not in the Drylands. It would take time for him to gather help from his allies, and time might be in short supply. A Champion or two could stop the Jinn now, before he became too powerful, but the longer they waited, the harder it would be to stop him. So she would send him word only after she sent word to Sasha.

  She folded the bird back up, held it in her hands, and concentrated. I need a Champion, or more than one. I need the nearest. I need the strongest of the nearest, something that can take on a Jinn, someone clever, someone skilled. I need you also to find the nearest Champion who qualifies that can also read, so that he or she can read your message.

  The nearest, strongest literate Champion; yes, that was exactly what she needed. There. That should do it. She folded the crane again and held it on her palm, balanced as if to fly. “Do my bidding, bear my word, then come you back, my paper bird,” she breathed to it.

  With a rustle, the bird sprang to life.

  It hovered over her hand for just a moment, tiny paper wings a blur, then shot off into the sky, just as she felt the hum return. She bit her lip. The Jinn could probably sense magic being worked. Had he felt her at work? Had he sensed the bird? Swiftly she turned to the rosebush beside her.

  A moment later, the Jinn appeared in the middle of the garden, with a sound like a thunderclap and a puff of smoke, his bronze face creased with a ferocious frown. She froze in place, as if terrified, as his eyes lit on her, then moved to the branch of the rosebush in her hand.

  The barren branch was now showing life, in fact, the entire bush had come back to life. Green leaves were slowly unfurling and there was a hint of buds where there had been only dry thorns before.

  The Jinn stalked over to her.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  She shrank back. “T-tending the garden,” she stammered. “They were drying dying, these roses. Green things…it is what I do….”

  “A waste of magic!” he growled. “Putter about in the dirt if you wish, but waste no more magic on it! Your magic is mine to draw on!”

  She nodded, and let go of the branch. He stalked away.

  And only then did she heave a sigh of relief. The illusion of greenery about the bush faded away. It took very little magic to create an illusion, especially when it was one that someone would reasonably believe.

  But while she was at it—the bush was still alive, it only needed coaxing. And today in the bottom of a chest she had found a very practical set of the baggy trews and a sleeveless shirt of some light beige stuff that was not linen and was not silk, being softer than the former and tougher than the latter. She went to change into those, to nurture the garden the hard way while she continued to think and plan as hard as she ever had in her life.

  * * *

  There was no fence or border or even a border guard on the road where the Kingdom of Led Belarus ended and the wilderness began. The only sign of the transition was the road itself, which went from being in relatively good repair to degenerating to a rutted dirt track within a matter of a few hundred yards. This was forested land, the beautiful hardwood forest of the north, mostly untouched even by woodcutters. The trees reached high into the sky, and the track lay deep in shade. Where fallen trunks lay, they were covered in soft moss. Here the leafy trees were mixed with cedar, and the scent of them was sharp on the air. There should be mushrooms. He wished he had the time to look.

  It was there that he encountered the old beggar woman.

  He had been expecting one all along. In fact, he was rather surprised that The Tradition hadn’t supplied him with old beggar women between every village. If ever there was a situation that The Tradition must surely be agitated about—if something like the Tradition could be agitated—it was this one. The Sea King’s daughter missing, some dire problem in the north, and not a Godmother in sight. By now it must be spinning around like a dancing mouse, trying to find a solution to a problem. It was, he thought, dreadfully ironic that usually it was a Godmother working to find a way to steer The Tradition into an alternate path in order to solve a problem. Here it was The Tradition itself frantically casting around to heal itself.

  It was too bad that he didn’t yet know what the problem was.

  Needless to say he was not at all surprised to see the old beggar woman there just over the border, as if she had been placed there to intercept him.

  She was a small, bent bundle of black and rusty-brown fabric beside the road. He couldn’t see her face, only the fold of her shawl over her head and a curling lock of white hair. She looked up at him from under her shawl as he rode near, and held out her hand to him, entreatingly. “Please, young man, can you spare an old woman a crust?” Her voice was soft and quavering.

  “Little mother, I can spare far more than a crust,” he said, dismounting. “You look fair famished and you are terribly far away from anything like a village. Come—” leading his horse with one hand, he took her by the elbow with the other, and escorted her to a fallen log. “Here, now sit down, rest your honored bones, and let me tend you, as surely your own son would want you to be tended.”

  “Alas I have no son,” she replied, looking startled as he spread out a napkin and broke open a small loaf for her, stuffing it with the cheese he had bought at the last village. He put the bread down on the clean napkin, then handed her his own waterskin to drink from.

  “Eat and drink, little mother,” he said, “and when you are done, I will take you up behind me and take you to your home. You should not be alone out here, and you should not have to walk when I can carry you.”

  The “old woman” made a sound between a snort and a giggle and pulled the shawl off her head, revealing a not-so-old woman. “That won’t be needed, Prince Sasha,” said the witch, in a perfectly normal and pleasant alto voice. “I don’t know why anyone ever bothers to test you anymore. You clearly expect every test we could give you.”

  “No more do I know why you test me,” he said cheerfully. “But I like finding living folks on desolate roads, I like giving beggars something to eat, and I like witches. So as it’s about midday, do have some bread and cheese and share a meal with me. It’s very good bread. Another witch baked it for me.”

  “Did she, then? Well good, thank you, I will.” She took the half of the loaf he had already stuffed with cheese and began making a hearty meal of it, while he tore open the other half and served it in the same fashion. “Well the warning I was to give you, if you passed the test, was that in order
to get where you’re going, you’ll have to deal with Baba Yaga.”

  “Hmm. That’s not good news,” he replied, starting on his own half. “In fact, I have to say that is very bad news indeed. Of all the creatures in the world that I would rather not meet, she is high on the list.”

  “But she will have something you need if you are going to succeed.” The witch shrugged. “The saints only know what that thing is, I certainly don’t. It could be anything from a single pin to an elephant.”

  The mental image of Baba Yaga riding an elephant made him blink, and he shook his head to clear it. There was such a thing as having too vivid an imagination.

  “A single pin is more like, but you never know,” continued the witch.

  “Anything else you can tell me?” he asked.

  “Only that The Tradition is not happy about something that is north of here. Whatever it is, it’s an irritant now, and if it stays there it will become deadly as well as dangerous and we will all find ourselves in rather a pickle. Now you know everything that I know.”

  He nodded. The witch was a very pleasant-faced, tall, thin woman of about late middle age. Unlike the illusion she had worn, she was not stoop-shouldered, nor were there more than a few streaks of white in her light brown hair. “In that case, may I give you a ride anywhere?”

  She shook her head, and helped herself to his waterskin. “I live just off the road. I live in a rather nice, dry cave, actually. It’s been used by the witches hereabouts for generations. It’s warmer in winter and cooler in summer than any house I’ve ever had, and I never have to fix the roof. I share it with a bear.”

  “A bear!” His eyebrows rose. He saw no reason not to take her literally. “That’s likely to keep you even safer than having a wolfhound!”

  “And he is very pleasant company, when he hibernates, he is warmer in winter to curl up against than a dog, and in summer, he feeds himself. He is not a bear-man, but he is a Wise Bear. We get along.” She smiled. “Now, I wouldn’t turn down another loaf if you happen to have one to spare.”