A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then stopped. The light dimmed immediately. “What are you doing?” he demanded, sounding a little surprised.

  Katya breathed in dust and old wood, keeping her breaths shallow, as she listened to the others. “Telling future,” the gypsy said, an insolent tone in her voice. “Hoping to see you not in it.”

  “You are wasting magic,” he replied, surprise giving way to his usual irritation.

  “Is mine to waste,” she said indifferently. “If you wanted tame, timid girl, you should have taken tame, timid girl. You carried away Django girl. You get what you took.”

  “Insolent mortal!” the Jinn growled. “Very well, if you are going to waste it, I must take more from you from now on, so you cannot!”

  Klava gasped, there was a strange, discordant sound—

  Katya stifled a gasp of her own, as she was overwhelmed by a feeling that something was pulling all the blood from her body. She thought for a moment that she was going to faint.

  Then the moment passed, though Katya still felt weak, and the Jinn sounded as if he was speaking from a great distance. “Heed my orders in the future,” he said.

  “If I choose,” said the gypsy, and laughed, though weakly.

  The Jinn growled, and Katya felt the hum that signaled his presence receding.

  She continued to breathe shallowly, all her limbs as heavy as lead. After a moment, the lid to the chest came up, and she sat up. “I think I’ll just stay here for a while,” she said weakly. Klava nodded.

  “That was rather nasty,” the apprentice said, looking as unexpectedly exhausted as if she had run for seven leagues, then spent a sleepless night.

  “Was expecting same,” the gypsy replied. Katya looked to her, and saw that, though she looked a bit drained, she did not look as wretched as either Klava or herself. At Katya’s look of puzzlement, the gypsy smirked.

  “Source of your magic is you,” she said, pointing to Katya. “And same being for you, Klava. Source of my magic is all gypsies. He takes only what I have at moment, and no more. I call upon magic of my people, it is all returned to me again.” And indeed, she was looking better and better as time passed. “I think we do this again, when bird returns. Yes?”

  “He’ll mark you as the troublemaker,” Katya warned weakly.

  “This is not new thing for me.” The gypsy lost her smirk, and shrugged. “Everywhere gypsy goes, are marked as troublemaker. Me, he will not kill, I am knowing how far to push, and no farther.” She looked about furtively. “I am Anya,” she whispered, giving them her name for the first time.

  Katya gave her a little bow; she had noticed that the gypsy girl never offered to take anyone’s hand. “Thank you for your name,” she said, taking care not to repeat it. Names are power. The gypsies must take the opposite tack as her father, keeping their names hidden as much as possible to keep people from taking that power. “But I shall call you Magda.”

  The gypsy’s face lit up with a smile. “Is good name. Was name of babushka. Am liking name.”

  Looking completely recovered now, she offered Katya a hand out of the chest, which Katya sorely needed.

  “Did you notice?” Klava said suddenly. “He didn’t seem to know he was taking power from three, rather than two.”

  Katya blinked at that. It was true. And there were other things, now that she thought about it. “And he never appears when Lyuba and Shura transform, nor when Guiliette passes through walls.”

  “I think,” Klava said, slowly, “perhaps those things that we do that are a part of us do not count as spells. I have never seen nor heard Lyuba say anything when she transforms.”

  Katya pondered that. “I can’t think how that could be useful, but it might. We should remember that.”

  “Magda” laughed. “Is useful because he cannot tell when we are searching!” she said triumphantly. “But we must tell others. In search, some might think to use spell, and that would be bad.”

  Katya nodded. “I will, when we gather for dinner,” she said. “But now—I really think I will go and lie down.”

  “Be lying down here,” Magda said firmly. “Is place in other room I use when want to be alone. I keep watch.”

  Katya and Klava both staggered into the tiny room that Magda pointed to, and found a pallet had been made up there on the floor, with a plethora of pillows and so many shawls, curtains and draperies that Katya blinked. Why on earth would Magda have decorated this room like a draper’s showroom?

  “Oh…it looks like a tent,” Klava said instantly. “Oh poor Magda—she’s homesick….”

  “Then we’ll have to get her home,” Katya said firmly, which ended up being the last thing she said for a while. The inviting pile of pillows pulled her into itself and she fell asleep listening to Magda humming a strange, wild melody.

  * * *

  Sunset painted the landscape outside the window in hues of pink and rose, with the shadow of the mountain etched across the face of the forest. Sasha didn’t know whether to feel encouraged or discouraged that it was taking the Queen so long to make a decision. The attendant kept faithfully filling his teacup and feeding him the entire time. From time to time, trays of new food were brought in, and the samovar was kept topped up; Sasha had so far gone through an entire banquet of courses in small portions, from blinis and sour cream, to mushrooms, to tiny portions of baked fish and a whole quail treated like a larger bird. It would have been a glorious afternoon if he had not been so anxious.

  Finally, as he was considering asking for another round of vodka to take the edge off his tension, the door opened, and one of the advisers walked in. Sasha leaped to his feet and bowed; the adviser gravely returned his salutation.

  “The Queen is with her tunnel planners even now,” the green-faced man said, without any preamble. “She has, in her graciousness, elected to help you.”

  Relief made Sasha as giddy as three glasses of vodka. “And we are grateful beyond telling,” he replied, with as much enthusiasm and sincerity as he could bring to bear.

  The adviser smiled thinly. “Actually, we of the Council wish to thank you. We have long felt the presence of this interloper to be a threat to the Kingdom of Copper Mountain, but we could not persuade her most gracious Majesty of this. You have, and we are in our turn grateful.”

  He blinked. “Why ever wouldn’t she believe you?” he asked, bewildered.

  The adviser examined his nails closely. “Her Majesty is…much older than she appears. Much. In all that time, there has never been a threat to our Kingdom from the surface dwellers. Since there never has been, she believed there never would be. She was of the firm belief that remaining neutral, and trading with all parties, made us too valuable to threaten—and too well allied. We who live shorter lives cannot afford to be so sanguine.”

  Sasha nodded in sympathy. “That’s something I can understand, and it isn’t just those who live long who fall into that trap,” he replied. “I have to allow a certain amount of danger into Led Belarus, even though I’d rather not. People who never face danger never believe that danger can come to them, and never recognize threats until it is too late.”

  The adviser looked up, and smiled. “You are a wise Fool indeed. Now, I am sent to tell you that we think there are tunnels leading out from the Castle already. If such exist, we will find them and strike for them. As I am sure you assumed, we tunnel very quickly indeed, especially when we need only carve a small and temporary passage. I think that is the only information you may need?”

  “It is. Thank you for your help, and thank you for your hospitality.” Sasha stood up, and included both the adviser and the attendant in his bow. “You have been gracious beyond measure.”

  “It is not often we have so pleasant a visitor from the surface world.” It was the attendant who replied, rather than the adviser. “Usually they are here only for lust or greed, and concentrate on the Queen and perhaps on her obvious advisers, and treat the rest of us as mere bagatelles.”

  As Sasha’s eyebrows shot up, t
he attendant laughed. “We are all equals here, Prince. Today I served you tea and dinner. Tomorrow, if my expertise is needed, I may don the robe of an adviser. Very few of us are set in one position during our lives. We find it makes for more balanced judgment.”

  “Well, some positions are better than others,” the adviser murmured diffidently.

  “But taking on the onerous ones for a time makes us all aware of our fellows’ feelings,” the attendant concluded wryly. “We believe that all those who are served should also spend time serving. Shall I see you to the door?”

  “Yes, please,” Sasha said weakly, glad beyond measure that his usual habits of treating everyone well had reaped such a bountiful harvest.

  He left the door he had come in through, after a friendly nod to the old man in the guardroom as he passed by. He found the two dragons enjoying the last of a bountiful meal in the fading blue of twilight, which eased a bit of his guilt at having left them for so long.

  “Well, there you are at last!” Adamant said, gulping down a raw goose whole by tossing it up in the air and catching it like a trained dog with a treat. “They treated us like honored guests, so I assume they did the same for you?”

  “Very much so,” he replied, and grinned. “She’s going to help us. She’s with the tunnel planners now.”

  “Ha!” Adamant said with delight. “Then it was worth the wait!”

  “You said that about the geese,” Gina said dryly.

  The grey dragon laughed. “You’ll say that, too, eventually. Just wait a few years and you find out how hard it is to catch a goose when you’re our size.”

  “Now wait a moment—” Sasha said, because by now his curiosity had gotten to the point where it was an unbearable itch that had to be scratched. “The things you keep saying make me think that Gina wasn’t always a dragon—”

  “Oh I wasn’t,” the emerald dragon said cheerfully. “I was a human Champion for Glass Mountain. It’s a long story, but I exchanged places with Periapt, Adamant’s brother, so that he could be with his human mate and I could join this fine and handsome fellow as his.”

  “Keep flattering me, wench, and I shall never get my head out of the clouds,” Adamant chuckled.

  But Sasha was still blinking at the idea of a human becoming a dragon. “That’s—powerful magic.”

  “Yes it is, and it couldn’t have been done without The Tradition practically breaking over us like a wave, and without human and dragon being willing to exchange places,” Adamant said, soberly. “And not without Godmother Elena. I don’t think there will ever be a piece of work that powerful again in our lifetimes. Certainly not in this part of the world.”

  “Well I insisted on staying a Champion, and Adamant decided he wanted to be one as well,” Gina continued, nuzzling behind the charcoal dragon’s frill affectionately. “I was very glad of that. Time enough to settle down and have hatchlings when we are tired of flying to the rescue!”

  “It does give us a certain amount of immunity from roving adventurers who want to make a name for themselves by slaying whatever dragon they happen to meet,” Adamant said dryly. “Besides, it means we become part of some amazing stories. Godmother Elena’s Champions do tend to get involved in unique situations.”

  “That is like saying that the ocean is a bit damp,” Gina laughed, then sobered. “Well, we have accomplished one goal. Now we need to find that little horse you were speaking of. Have you the least idea where you might find him?”

  Sasha sighed. Frying pan…. fire. “I last saw him around here, but he could be almost anywhere, I suppose.”

  “Well, in that case,” said a low, growling voice with a tinge of laughter in it, wafting in from out of the darkness. “I suppose you are going to need a tracker again. You humans! So careless with losing your friends!”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Wolf!” Sasha shouted with joy, and flung his arms around the huge beast’s neck. “I am beyond glad to see you!”

  “Piff,” snorted the Wolf. “A simple calculation made me realize I still hadn’t really repaid my debt to you. Nasty things, debts. Have a way of creeping up on you and jumping down your throat when you least expect them to. Thought I would hunt you down to deal with it, and lo! Here you are in my hunting grounds! Who are your large friends?”

  Hastily, Sasha made the introductions. “First a Fox, now a Wolf,” Gina murmured to Adamant. “I expect before the year is out we’ll have collected an entire menagerie.”

  “Ahem,” the Wolf said. “I heard that. Pot, kettle. You aren’t exactly running around on two legs yourselves.”

  “Don’t mind me,” Gina replied. “My mate will tell you I talk before I think sometimes.”

  “But if I do, she’ll hit me,” the grey dragon said, his red eyes sparkling with humor in the light of the rising moon.

  “We really need to find Sergei,” Sasha said urgently, ignoring them both. “It’s about that Jinn that’s in the Katschei’s Castle.”

  “The one making the forest into a desert?” The Wolf growled. “Even if it wasn’t paying off my debt, I’d help you with that. What call has he bringing his wretched desert into my forest, I ask you!”

  His tone was light, but underneath it was a deadly seriousness.

  “He thinks to conquer us easily, because The Tradition here does not know him,” Gina replied.

  “Bah. What need have we for The Tradition to guide us, when we know what to do with interlopers?” He snapped his jaws. “I wish I were something more than large and fierce and a good tracker. But never mind. I will find the Horse. He is still on this mountain somewhere, I scent him now and again when hunting. It could be, Prince Fool, that he is hunting for you.”

  “I hope so.” Sasha smiled a little in the dark. “If you can find him, he could be a key to being able to defeat this Jinn.”

  “Then I go!” the Wolf said, shaking his huge head. “You are staying here, yes?”

  “It’s too dark to fly,” said Adamant. “Crashing into things in the dark is bound to get you mocked when other dragons hear about it.”

  The Wolf laughed deep in his chest. “Makes me glad I am not able to fly then,” he said. “And that I can see in the dark. If the Horse is on this mountain tonight, I will find him!”

  He was a bounding silhouette against the night sky for a moment, and then he was gone.

  Sasha sighed. “The Tradition seems to be working for us, Champions,” he said to the dragons.

  “It does not like this Jinn,” Gina replied. “I think—”

  She was suddenly interrupted by a howl of triumph in the distance. All three of their heads swiveled in that direction.

  “You don’t think—”

  The howl came again, nearer.

  “Surely not—”

  The howl came practically on top of them, and the Wolf bounded in like an oversized, overexuberant dog, tail and head high, tongue lolling. “What did I say! What did I say! I am the best tracker on the mountain!”

  “And it is not as if I was trying to hide!” said a voice in midair above them, crossly. “In fact, I have been rather obvious! You could have found me at any time today, but no! You wait until I am just falling asleep! I ask you!”

  “Oh, land and be done, old woman!” the Wolf laughed. “The Fool will think you are more foolish than he is! He will set you up as a jester!”

  Sergei trotted down toward them; the moonlight, from a moon in its first quarter, was just bright enough to show that he was trotting in a descending spiral, as if the air were hard and he was using a ramp to come down. He heaved an enormous sigh as his four hooves touched the ground, then his long ears pricked up and he shook his head so that they flapped. “Hello Prince! I am pleased to see that the Queen has not made you forget everything but her!”

  Sasha rapped him lightly on the top of the head with his knuckles. “She is the loveliest creature in the world, but my heart goes elsewhere,” he replied. “And right now, she who has my heart is behind the walls of the Katsch
ei’s Castle in the heart of that growing patch of desert!”

  Quickly, he and the dragons explained the situation, as Sergei listened quietly.

  “I have a feeling,” he said. “I think that it would be very dangerous for her to use that paper bird again.” The Horse pawed the ground. “I will be your go-between, as you hoped. I think I can get into the herd and the stables tonight and tell her what you plan. And if need be, I may well be able to get out again to carry messages. It is the least I can do.”

  Sasha impulsively flung his arms around the Horse’s neck. “Sergei, you—”

  “Are wise and noble, yes I know.” The Horse whinnied a chuckle. “Just you capture that bird and don’t let it fly back to—”

  Something small smacked Sasha in the face. He batted at it with a yell, and found himself with a handful of paper bird.

  “—speak of the devil and it shall appear,” said Sergei in a voice heavy with irony.

  “Bah, I need a light now!” Hoping he wouldn’t somehow hurt or insult the bird, Sasha held it carefully in his teeth while he fumbled through his pack in the dark, looking for his fire-striker and the tiny lantern he had bought.

  Suddenly it became much easier to see, and he dug through his things for a good long moment before a polite cough made him look up.

  The Horse held some sort of glowing ball between his long ears.

  Sheepishly, Sasha stopped going through his pack, took the bird out of his mouth, and let it unfold. He peered at the tiny writing, shaking his head, until Sergei somehow made the ball glow brighter.

  “Saints! How can she write so small?” Carefully, he puzzled through the words. Some of it repeated what he already had learned from the Queen’s scholar. But one thing was completely new.

  “This Jinn was imprisoned in a bottle, she says,” he told the others. “One of the maidens was there when it was released by her master. She thinks the bottle has the spell to imprison him again on it, and perhaps—” he felt a sudden excitement “—perhaps even the Jinn’s True Name!”