Prince Ivan

by Morwood, Peter

“None of us said that, Ivan,” he said, “so you can put your honour and your pride away until you need it. And you can sit down and listen while we work out what to do. Last night the moon was just past full, so we’ve time enough to talk.”

  The discussion lasted for almost an hour, passing from one Prince to another. Each had questions for Ivan, interrogating him closely on whichever point gave most weight to their own arguments. There was only one problem, and it seemed to Ivan that he’d been the only one to see it. Neither Fenist, nor Vasiliy, nor even Mikhail the Raven, had said anything about how Koshchey the Undying might be killed. Escaped, yes; avoided, yes; imprisoned again, yes – although with reservations about how it might be done.

  But not how he could be done away with once and for all.

  At first Ivan felt uneasy about the ease with which his mind accepted killing to resolve his problem, but when he brought the matter up, his brother Princes laughed at such scruples.

  “Vanya, the old bastard cut off your head!” said Fenist Sokolov. “Doing the same to him is only right and proper.” He hesitated then produced a sort of helpless grin-and-shrug. “Of course first you have to find some way to do it so he won’t just get up again…”

  “Well done, brother mine,” said Ivan, very dry and trying not to smile at the Falcon’s expression. “Thanks for reminding me of a small point I might have completely overlooked.” They all laughed at Fenist’s discomfiture, all except Prince Mikhail.

  “I don’t see anything amusing about your ‘small point’, Vanya,” he said, stripping the length of driftwood down between his fingers until it was little more than a splayed brush of fibre. He shredded it still further until it came to pieces in his hands and fell to the sand of the beach, then raised his head and gazed into three pairs of worried eyes.

  “Maybe I didn’t tell you, or maybe you just didn’t realize, but those two bottles of the Waters, enough to complete my task, were all I was allowed. Understand this: I can travel East of the Sun and West of the Moon again, but I may not go on Ivan’s behalf. One visit to the Well and to the Fountain is all that any sorcerer is permitted. If Ivan is killed again, he stays dead!” That pronouncement and the haunted look in Mikhail’s eyes were enough to still all laughter.

  “Then what can we do?” Vasiliy closed his great hands into fists like hammers in his anger at being so helpless. “What can we do?”

  “Though we can do no more, we can advise,” said Mikhail. “As we’ve already done in a small way, through this discussion.”

  “It sounded more like an argument to me.” Vasiliy hadn’t been getting the best of the exchanged opinions.

  Fenist the Falcon slapped his hand against the sand. “Discussion, argument, squabble, fight, it all means the same if something useful comes of it!” He glanced sidelong at Ivan, and then looked long and hard at Mikhail. “So tell us, Misha – what did come of it?”

  “Less than I hoped,” said Mikhail. “But enough. And the most important thing of all is, if Ivan can find a horse as good as Koshchey’s he can elude pursuit.”

  “Is that all?” Prince Vasiliy the Eagle shook his head. “If we can do no more for Ivan in an hour of—” he paused and looked scornfully at his brothers, “—an hour of discussion, then we might as well have saved our breath. Can we tell him where to find this horse? Can we tell him what to do when he’s able to outrun Koshchey the Undying, but not kill him?” Vasya pulled his sodden fur hat from his head, glared at it, conceded at last that it was ruined and flung it into the sea. “Can we tell him anything, except that we can tell him nothing?”

  “We can tell him to ask his wife.” Fenist Sokolov the Falcon spoke without raising his voice, but his words carried as well as if he had shouted. Heads turned, and the beginning of another acrimonious ‘discussion’ between Vasiliy and Fenist faded into silence. “Koshchey was held a prisoner for many years in Mar’ya Morevna’s kremlin. I think – no, I believe, that his capture of her is less an act of vengeance than of caution, from fear of what she knows, and what she can do to return him to his cell. So if her knowledge is the weapon he fears, then use it.”

  “Koshchey always tried to catch us as fast as he could.” Ivan spoke slowly as he arranged the patterns of his thoughts to match what he wanted to say. “It happened twice, and both times when I saw his horse the poor beast was all but flayed alive. I thought that was just another demonstration of his cruelty, but…”

  “But what if he was forcing the horse through fear?” said Mikhail the Raven. “Fear of what might happen if he failed to recapture Mar’ya Morevna? Think about that.”

  “I thought about it long ago,” said Ivan. “About my wife Mar’ya Morevna, and the powers written in her books of magic. Until,” he touched his throat and made a little, rueful cough, “Koshchey the Undying gave me something else to think about. But I agree with all of you, just as all of you agree with me. What I want to do is what I need to do.”

  The Princes looked at one another, wondering whose opinion had proven most useful, and then back to Ivan as he rose from his seat on the beach and dusted sand out of his garments.

  “And what I want to do,” he said, “is see my wife again…”

  *

  The dark kremlin hadn’t changed since last he saw it, a lifetime ago. It was still as grim, still as dark, and still as lifeless as those times before, but now, knowing more than ever what he had to lose if he was caught, Ivan slipped into the kremlin on soft feet and left Burka and his noisy hoofs far, far away. The Princes had restored not only his life but also his horse, and Ivan hadn’t taken time to wonder how they did it.

  He paused briefly to press a hand to his aching temples, envying Misha and the others whatever early training permitted such lavish expenditure of power without apparent cost. Mar’ya Morevna had tried to explain it once, using phrases like ‘controlled imbalance of forces’ – which to Ivan’s minimally tutored ear suggested that his brothers-in-law were gaining advantage from giving short measure. If magic was like reading, they could understand monastic shorthand and his wife could read book-script, while he was still spelling out his words with great effort one letter at a time.

  Simple though it was, the charm that learned from a distance if Koshchey was at home was taking its toll, hence his headache. At least he’d taken enough care to avoid another nosebleed. The feeling it gave him was like that delicate sense in the fingertips which warns, without needing to touch, if a coal fallen from the fire is still painfully hotter than it seems when its glow has turned to black.

  Koshchey’s black kremlin was safely cold.

  Even so Ivan had a sabre in his hand, one with silvered mounts and grip but a severely plain blade, a weapon for use not show. It had been given to him by Vasiliy the Eagle, handed over without a word, but with a tight embrace about the shoulders that drove all the breath from Ivan’s lungs.

  Then there had been a flickering of light, and he’d taken his next breath in the chilly air surrounding Koshchey’s kremlin.

  The sword’s fine edge would be useless against the master of the house, but Ivan, more cautious and more devious in his dealings with Koshchey the Undying, was prepared for other things. Armed and armoured guards were foremost in his mind. He had broken into the necromancer’s home not once but twice, proof enough that Koshchey’s reputation wasn’t the defence against thieves he might have hoped. Even an ordinary kulak merchant would have taken steps by now to stop the thief getting in so easily on any third occasion.

  Yet the kremlin’s gates were open wide, there was neither sight nor sound of guards, and as he stood in the centre of the shadowed courtyard, Ivan knew he was almost alone in that sprawling heap of stone. He had crept softly for several minutes along the corridors leading to the high tower before he realized why Koshchey hadn’t taken further steps to defend his home against Prince Ivan.

  When the realization struck, Ivan’s legs began to tremble until they refused to hold him up, and he had to press his back against the wall and sli
de down until he sat on the floor with those unsteady legs stuck out in front of him. There was a laugh bubbling up within him and he knew he daren’t let it out, but still – his chest heaved in great racking, silent sobs of mirth – there could be very few intruders with the privilege of knowing that walking in unchallenged this time is because last time, they were caught and…

  And cut to pieces.

  The laughter and the shaking went away as they had come, together, and Ivan pushed himself back up the wall until his legs were once more braced under his weight. He took several deep breaths to make sure he was back in control of himself, and then walked on towards the stairway leading in a spiral to the topmost chambers of the kremlin’s tallest tower.

  And Mar’ya Morevna was there.

  At first she refused to move from her chair by the window, for in her heart there was only disbelief, certain this was a trick sent by Koshchey to torment her steadfast memory. She held that conviction right up to the moment when Ivan walked across the room and gathered her into his arms, and then all beliefs went quite away, in the knowledge that her own dear husband was suddenly alive again. There was laughter, and there were tears, and there were long moments of silence.

  And after that there was an explanation of what had happened, told as fully as Ivan was able. Mar’ya Morevna listened, nodding wisely, cool and calm and controlled once more. “So the Princes think Koshchey fears me,” she said, and looked at Ivan with a glitter in her eyes like sunlight from a razor’s edge. “He’s right to fear me. Very right indeed. Before all this, I’d have restored him to his cell, and let him live. Now I want what he tried to take from you. His life – and his damnation to the hottest pit of Hell!”

  “How?”

  “My father’s books contain many answers to that question, Vanya. I wouldn’t have used them before… Before Koshchey killed you. Now I’ll use as many as I need. But first,” she smiled thinly, wryly, knowing she was asking for the moon on a silver dish, “I need to reach them.”

  Ivan looked at the stillness of Mar’ya Morevna’s beautiful face, and listened to the music in her gentle voice, and they frightened him more than any roar of wrath from Koshchey the Undying had ever done. Prince Vasiliy the Eagle had spoken much as she had done, choosing almost the same words and yet, though he was a great, strong, square-shouldered man and she a slender, lovely woman, it was her threat that rang more true. In that moment Ivan knew he would not exchange his own frail mortality for Koshchey’s eternal life; no, not for all his happiness on Earth or all his hopes of Heaven.

  “That was what Misha suspected,” he said. “So I need a horse as fast as Koshchey’s. No, I need one that’s faster. I need to learn where to find it, and to learn that I’ll have to leave you here.”

  “I expected nothing else,” she said, “so don’t fret. If you’d stolen me away, his horse would tell him as it did every other time. We’d get no further than last time before Koshchey overtook us and Vanya, I couldn’t live to lose you again.” Her voice didn’t have the softness of one speaking endearments but the firmness of one uttering a simple fact, and Ivan shivered as he realised what she meant. The towers of Koshchey’s kremlin were high and the courtyard was hard, unyielding stone. Mar’ya Morevna touched his cheek as if to brush away that evil thought. “I said, what would you have me do?”

  Tsarevich Ivan moved his mouth in what was a smile only because there was no other way to describe it. “Be clever and pretty, Mar’ya Morevna,” he said. “Be wise and be witty. And have drink close to hand for when Koshchey comes home…”

  *

  Hoofs rang in the courtyard below the window of the high tower, and Mar’ya Morevna leaned forward to look out. She watched Koshchey the Undying cross the cobblestones at a gallop, then haul back on his reins to wrench his black horse to a skidding, sparking standstill. Mar’ya Morevna watched him stable the horse, take off its saddle, and give it hay and water; but she saw how he didn’t take the brutal bit from its soft mouth, for once out, the horse would have died fighting him before it let that bit back in.

  She turned away, frowning – and then turned back, listening to the voices from the courtyard as they said things that made her raise her eyebrows and smile a secret smile. Koshchey, as he had done so often before, was demanding that the horse tell how matters lay in his realm. Mar’ya Morevna could hear the animal’s replies quite clearly, and just as clearly she could hear that its answers were far from complete. Though it mentioned she was still safely imprisoned it said no word about Tsarevich Ivan, alive and well and hiding in a linen-chest outside her rooms, and her smile grew wider as she realized why. Koshchey was cruel, but Ivan had been kind.

  Mar’ya Morevna lifted a flask of vodka and took out its stopper. She turned it over in her fingers then, as she waited for her captor to climb up the many stairs, she flung that stopper into the heart of the fire. The door of her room flew open and rebounded with a crash from its stops, and as Koshchey the Undying came in she poured vodka for herself, then turned to glare at him.

  “Mannerless peasant! Is this the way you enter the rooms of a high-born widowed lady?” She threw the vodka at his face.

  Koshchey blocked the spray of stinging liquor with an upflung hand and brushed the rest from his beard. “I smell a Russian smell,” he said, glowering from beneath his eyebrows as he stalked around the room. Mar’ya Morevna chuckled unpleasantly in her throat and poured more vodka, spilling much of it across her hand and the rest across the floor.

  “You smell,” she said. She drank down the little that remained, then poured herself another. “And you still fear my husband, though you killed him. That’s the Russian smell you think is here: no more than your own fear, born of the good and wholesome smells of Russia that caught on your clothing as you rode across Moist-Mother-Earth.”

  Mar’ya Morevna looked at the cup in her hand and, as she looked, it trembled so most of the liquor spilled out. She changed hands to shake the last drops from her fingers, then filled the cup again.

  “How much have you drunk today?” said Koshchey, looking for the stopper of the vodka flask and seeing not a trace of it.

  “Not enough to compensate for a life spent with you!” She flung the contents of her refilled cup at Koshchey, but missed him when he ducked. Then she laughed a wild, eerie laugh that would have raised the hackles of a mortal man. “Sit down and drink with me, Koshchey the Undying, Koshchey the Old, and tell me how it was in the world before I knew only sorrow.” She waved the vodka flask at him, and crystal drops of spirit that were as clear as the Water of Life splashed across the rich rugs on the floor. “And maybe I might tell you how it was when I was happy, long ago.”

  Koshchey was nothing loath, for though she was his enemy and his prisoner, she was the fairest Princess in all the Russias and neither prison nor vodka could ever take that from her. Mar’ya Morevna’s hair was bright against the darkness of her widow’s garments, for she had pushed back the black cowl around her face. Though she could never be called merry, in her resigned and bitter way she made a good companion for one who down the years had seen all his friends die, or had slain them himself. It was as if she had finally realized she was a widow and decided to make the best of things. So she talked, and she mocked, and she drank like a Russian, and because he was unwilling to be beaten by a woman, Koshchey drank to match her cup for cup.

  What he didn’t see was the amethyst set at the bottom of her cup, nor the amethyst ring on her hand, turned so that the stone was inward out of sight, nor the great amethyst crystal hanging on a golden chain around her neck, beside the cross that she wore always. Wise men had written that amethyst gave protection against strong drink, and Mar’ya Morevna had read those writings. But she also took care that when Koshchey wasn’t watching, she emptied her cup out of the window, or among the roots of the great plants set in tubs to make her cell look less a prison, and when there was no way to divert his eye, she would spill some of her drink then make sure to laugh so hard at her mista
ke that all the rest was spilled as well.

  Mar’ya Morevna knew all about the supposed powers of amethyst, but she believed in being practical as well.

  They drank vodka, and then they drank wine, and when the wine was done, they drank kvas, and beer, and even some kumys that Koshchey found in its leather bottle, hanging from a hook somewhere. And Koshchey the Undying, though proof against blades and proof against poison, became most monstrously drunk. He was content: his most annoying enemy was dead and hacked to pieces, floating somewhere on the Azov Sea as food for fish; his next enemy was a despairing captive in his kremlin, so much resigned to her lot as prisoner and widow that she had talked and drunk with him, and even made him laugh; and his name was once more held in the fear and respect that had been proper many years ago.

  Koshchey closed his eyes and dozed, waking just enough to drink from the cup that Mar’ya Morevna kept filled for him but not enough to see that she no longer even made pretence to fill her own. When she spoke to him he laughed when it seemed proper, and for the rest answered in a drowsy voice close to the edge of sleep.

  Until at last he slept.

  Mar’ya Morevna looked at her cup, and at the amethyst within it, and grinned a crooked grin at the crystal as if it was a fellow conspirator. Whether through the power of the stone, or by her own sleight of hand in spilling, losing or in other ways disposing of what had been in that cup, she felt no more ill effects from five hours of constant drinking than a slight, slow swirling behind her eyes, and a tendency, hastily and carefully corrected, to put her feet on places where there was no floor beneath them.

  She looked at Koshchey the Undying, sprawled back in his chair with bubbles dripping from his slack-lipped mouth at every grating snore, and felt her fingers itching for the hilt of a knife. If only the satisfaction of slitting his throat would do some permanent good… Which it would not. Mar’ya Morevna dismissed the notion and walked unsteadily from the room.

  “The things I do for you,” she said very softly, breathing the words instead of whispering them so that the sibilance of a whisper wouldn’t carry.