The Midnight Land: Part Two: The Gift (The Zemnian Trilogy Book 2)

by E. P. Clark

  “You’ll have to ask Oleg Svetoslavovich,” said Slava, trying to pretend that she hadn’t heard what Dima had said. For a moment she couldn’t stop herself from imagining being Oleg Svetoslavovich, and dreading his duty of providing her with a child…Stop, stop, stop, she told herself. He seemed eager enough at the time, however he may have felt about it beforehand. She remembered the look on his face as they had separated, and wondered if perhaps he had dreaded his duty because it would then mean leaving…Best not to think too much about it, she told herself. It was unlikely that Oleg was suffering any particular pangs of longing over her. Probably he was already with Svyatoslav, helping him become accustomed to his new role as the gods’ servant, and wasn’t thinking of her at all…

  “What is it, Tsarinovna?” asked Dima.

  “I’m sorry?” said Slava.

  “You seemed to be thinking of something very important, Tsarinovna.”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Slava. “I was thinking about how best to leave, that was all. I’ll return and speak with Olga about it when she is less…occupied.”

  “I think that would be best, Tsarinovna,” said Dima. “Meanwhile, I will return to my post.” He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

  “Good luck,” Slava told him.

  “Thank you, Tsarinovna—I’ll need it.” He walked reluctantly back to his position behind the raised dais where Olga and Vasilisa Vasilisovna were still arguing—over some incredibly meaningless triviality involving whether the party of soldiers should spend two nights or three in the burnt-down village, as far as Slava could tell—and Slava, thanking the gods that she could slip out of there unnoticed, slipped out of there unnoticed.

  ***

  Slava did manage to find Olga in a slightly better frame of mind later that day, and broach the subject of leaving, which Olga leapt upon joyously.

  “Let’s leave tomorrow!” she cried, as soon as Slava mentioned it.

  “Will we be ready in time?” Slava asked.

  “Well, we don’t really have any possessions that would require packing, and the road is comparatively easy from here back to Krasnograd, so we would need few provisions,” said Olga.

  “It may take slightly longer than that for Vladislava to prepare, and we will have to travel more slowly and carefully because of her…And Vasilisa Vasilisovna may not be ready for us to leave quite yet…” said Slava, trying to think of how to ask Olga if she really thought she should abandon her responsibilities in Lesnograd so soon.

  “Who cares about them?” demanded Olga. “It will be good for them not to lean so much on us!”

  “And your mother…Still between life and death…She has not woken up for days, has she?”

  “Oh, knowing her, she’ll probably stay like that for months, and then suddenly get well just when it’s most inconvenient,” said Olga dismissively.

  “And the situation with Andrey Vladislavovich…Is this something we should really leave in Vasilisa Vasilisovna’s hands?”

  This argument did give Olga pause, and after a moment she conceded, although not with very good grace, that they should wait at least until the party who had been dispatched to the village could return and report.

  “Which means we won’t be able to leave for another four days at the earliest,” she groaned. “Well, perhaps my boys would like to do some training! They’ve had more than enough time sitting around in inns, flirting with innkeepers’ daughters! They’re long overdue for a good beating!” And she strode off energetically, leaving Slava to hope that she meant “a good beating” to be a vigorous session of swordplay, and not anything more sinister.

  While waiting for the party to return from the village was not to Olga’s taste, Slava found it very relaxing. She spent the next few days re-reading the book she had found and the scrolls she had copied, and contemplating what Miroslava Praskovyevna and Lyubov the Kind had meant. She also went with Vladislava to visit Alina Marinovna, who treated them both with kindness, greeted the news of Vladislava’s impending departure for Krasnograd with appropriate sorrow and delight, and informed them that she had heard nothing from any sorceresses, except that they all seemed to fleeing farther from Lesnograd, for “A terrible fear had overcome them,” according to her sources.

  “I’ve never heard of the like,” she told them. “Sorceresses are many things, but cowards they are not. Normally they go running right towards the things that ordinary women run away from—that’s why they’re sorceresses. For them to be running away when the rest of us are sitting here drinking tea and waiting for spring is a new thing, I must say. Makes you worry, though. What do you say, Tsarinovna: should we all be fleeing along with the sorceresses? Is some threat heading our way?”

  “I think most likely only the sorceresses are in danger,” said Slava. “Let us hope the rest of Lesnograd will be passed by.”

  “True enough, and I can’t flee anyway, and neither can the rest of us. It’s only sorceresses that travel so light they can drop everything and run whenever they want. Of course, it’s only sorceresses that need to drop everything and run all the time. The rest of us know better than to go meddling in things that don’t concern us.” And with that, Alina Marinovna turned the conversation back to the doings of a niece of hers who was, in her words, “trying to lure in some young man who couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to be lured or not.” This furnished them with an afternoon’s worth of conversation, and the terrible fear that had overcome the sorceresses seemed to be completely forgotten.

  ***

  The next day, when Olga was already fidgeting around the kremlin demanding to know where her scouting party was, even though they were not due back for at least another day, maybe more, their dinner was interrupted with the news that a group of ragged men were asking for Olga Vasilisovna at the city gates. Seizing this gods-given opportunity to get outside, Olga rushed off to interrogate them personally, and returned with the welcome news that the ragged men were, in fact, her own men that she had left behind in Khladniye Vody. Although not completely recovered, they had left as soon as they had found the strength to walk.

  “They say there were all sorts of uncanny doings there,” she reported. “There was something strange about that girl caring for them, and especially the old herbwoman, and at night, they said, leshiye would walk right by the bathhouse door, they were sure of it, leshiye and maybe other things, as well, even stranger and more frightening. They were starting to think they’d never make it out of there alive, and their healing was going so slow, too, but then a few days ago they woke up one morning full of new strength, and the old herbwoman came to them and said a bargain had been honored and they could leave, so they did. The villagers drove them to the nearest waystation, and then they caught a ride with some merchants, and here they are. I wonder what that bargain was, don’t you? Oh, and they asked for their ‘Krasna Tsarina.’ They said they needed to thank you.”

  “I’ll go now,” said Slava.

  Misha, Vova, Volodya, Vladik, and Zhenya were all lying in a large room full of small beds when Slava went to them. Although they looked better than the last time she had seen them, they were very thin and weak, and when they rose at her arrival, they did so slowly and stiffly.

  “Krasna Tsarina!” cried Misha, but in a voice so weak it made Slava wince.

  “Please, sit,” she told them. “You have still not regained your full strength yet, I can tell.”

  “Ah, well, you may be right, Krasna Tsarina, but if you’d seen us a week ago, you’d be singing a different tune,” said Misha, attempting to grin as he collapsed back onto his bed.

  “Yes, I thought we’d never get out of there, Krasna Tsarina,” put in Zhenya. “The healing went so slow, it’s hardly worth calling it healing at all.”

  “But then five days ago we all woke up cured,” said Misha. “Well, not cured, Krasna Tsarina, but we could stand. And then Baba Anya came to us and told us we should go, and that we should thank you for holding up your end of the bargain. So th
ank you, Krasna Tsarina, for holding up your end of the bargain.”

  “It was my pleasure,” said Slava, rapidly calculating. Five days ago…Five days ago she had parted from Oleg. She had to suppress a smile.

  “What did you do, Krasna Tsarina, if you don’t mind my asking?” said Vladik. “It must have been some powerful magic. Baba Anya seemed to think it was something marvelous.”

  “It was nothing,” said Slava.

  “Yes, but…”

  “Be quiet, silly, can’t you see that’s between our Krasna Tsarina and the gods?” said Misha, reaching out and giving Vladik a very feeble swat on the back of his head.

  “Really, Krasna Tsarina?” asked Vladik, gazing at her wide-eyed and not even bothering to respond to Misha’s assault.

  “Misha is right,” said Slava. “But I am very glad that you were able to leave Khladniye Vody and return to Lesnograd. I hope your recovery continues to be as speedy as it has been of late.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will, Krasna Tsarina, now you’re looking out for us,” said Misha. “But is it true what Olga Vasilisovna says? You’re planning to return to Krasnogorod soon?”

  “Yes,” said Slava.

  “We won’t be fit to accompany you, no doubt,” said Vladik sadly. “We’ll be left behind again, like useless invalids.”

  “The services you have already rendered have proven your worth many times over,” Slava assured them. “We will all be eternally grateful.”

  This cheered them up considerably, and Slava was able to leave them in high spirits. She returned to her own rooms thinking over what they had told her. It seemed that the gods, or the leshiye, or someone, had been holding them as hostages of sorts, waiting to see if Slava would fulfill her part of the bargain she had made for their healing. Although she had not been informed of that. She had thought that the leshiye, or whomever she had made her bargain with, had already done all the healing they were going to do when the bargain was first struck. To be honest, she hadn’t given the men left behind in Khladniye Vody much thought of late. She felt ashamed of her callousness, but there was nothing she could do about that, other than not tell them. And, she reminded herself, she had carried out her part of the bargain, and they had been healed, at least enough to leave Khladniye Vody, so she had rescued them, even if that had not been her intent. Truly, the ways of the gods are strange, she said to herself. If they had even had a plan, that is. Perhaps they had had no more of a plan than she had, and they were all merely reacting to events, instead of acting upon them. Well, there was nothing she could do about it either way, except hope for the best, she told herself.

  ***

  It took another two days, by which time Olga was practically beside herself with boredom, for the party dispatched to Mirik’s village to return. They sent word from the city gates that they needed to speak with Olga and Vasilisa Vasilisovna directly.

  “At last!” cried Olga on receiving the message. They were all sitting at the breakfast table, and Olga and Vasilisa Vasilisovna were arguing over yet another triviality. “Let’s go hear what they have to say! Tsarinovna, you should be there too, you know.” Which was how Slava found herself sitting on a small stool in the corner of the Great Hall, closer to the blazing fire than she would have liked, and waiting to hear the news from Mirik’s village.

  The party had returned with an extra member, a stocky, red-faced man with lank hair and an expression of angry defiance. It was quickly discovered that when the party had arrived at the village, they had found the villagers attempting to rebuild it and casting curses against “That nobleman from Lesnogorod” who had done this to them. The red-faced man, whose name was Innokenty, had been casting curses the loudest. When they had questioned him about what had happened, he complained loudly and at length about the death of his wife, which had left him widowed, bereft, and destitute.

  “I am the real victim of that nobleman,” he had said several times. “I’m the one who lost the most from his cruel, shameless behavior. Where is he? I’d like to tell him what I think of him!”

  On further questioning, though, it turned out that his wife had told him the very day of the fire that she was setting him aside for another, and much younger and handsomer, man. Not only that, but Innokenty’s wife and new lover were the only people to have died in the fire. The search party had thought this warranted further investigation, and had brought Innokenty back to Lesnograd.

  “Oh…What do we do now…” said Vasilisa Vasilisovna at this news, wringing her hands.

  “Did you kill your wife and her lover in the fire and blame it on the nobleman from Lesnograd?” asked Olga.

  “No!” said Innokenty, drawing himself up proudly. Too proudly, Slava thought. He was lying. She thought about telling Olga of her guess, but couldn’t decide if that would be a good idea. What would Olga do…and it was only a guess…and she already disliked him, she could tell, she hated the waves of vindictive selfishness brought on by suffering rising off of him, and she could already see that this story would have no good ending…he was guilty (and how wrong was it that a guilty man should have the name Innokenty?), and they would all be touched by his guilt in their judgment of him…he was cursed, she could feel it, and now they would all be cursed in turn…if, that is, his curse could even get a foothold in amongst all the other curses teaming around them…

  “How do I know you’re not lying?” Olga asked, interrupting Slava from her thoughts by echoing them disconcertingly. “I don’t, of course. Probably you are lying. What do you think we should do with him, Vasya?”

  “Oh…I don’t know…If he didn’t set the fire, then who did?”

  “Not I!” cried Innokenty proudly. “And you’d best set your own house in order before accusing innocent men! They say the nobleman who came chasing after one of our girls is husband to the old princess’s daughter! I see the kind of morals that hold sway in Lesnogorod! And then you blame it on us simple folk! Probably you drove him to it, you know—they say his wife—is that you, you with the red hair?—took up with another man—well, no wonder he went mad, any man would…” Innokenty was so beside himself with rage that he had, it seemed, completely forgotten where he was and whom he was addressing, or at least the consequences of shouting at the people he was addressing, and fell silent only when his anger choked him completely.

  “We’ll get nothing of use out him now,” said Olga, looking at Innokenty and his accusations with extreme distaste. “Perhaps we should put his feet to the fire…See what he says then…”

  “WHAT!” screamed Slava before she could stop herself.

  “What?” said Olga, looking at Slava with surprise.

  “Torture!” cried Slava in horror. “You would torture him?!”

  “How else are we to get the truth?” asked Olga. “And I want to get to the bottom of this.” She gave Innokenty another look of intense dislike. Slava couldn’t tell if it was because he was proving Andrey’s innocence, or because he was reminding Olga of her own guilt. Probably both.

  “So you would torture him?” demanded Slava, her voice cracking with revulsion. She could see by Olga’s face as soon as she had said it that it had been the wrong thing to do. Now Olga had become so determined to hide her own guilt that she would do anything to prove her innocence, and if that meant torturing Innokenty, so much the better. At least it would break up the tedium.

  “Wait,” said Slava, as Olga opened her mouth to utter some angry and self-serving explanations. Don’t be angry, Slava reminded herself. Don’t think about how much she disgusts you right now, about how much she makes you want to hurt her. Just think about how to stop this as quickly as possible. “Wait,” she repeated. “There is no need to put his feet to the fire to get to the truth. The feet bear no truth, as you well know. The feet bear no truth, but I do. I can see my way to the truth much better than any torture.”

  “So what!” demanded Olga. “If he’s guilty, your squeamishness won’t let you allow him to be punished—you might even lie on
his behalf, if you thought you needed to save him! I know your weaknesses, Tsarinovna! You should leave the room and leave this business to the real rulers!”

  For a moment Slava was afraid she was going to shout at Olga that she was no ruler, that neither she nor Vasilisa Vasilisovna were fit to rule a rose-patch, let alone a province, but she clamped her mouth shut just in time. “Call Vladislava Vasilisovna,” she said instead.

  “What?” asked Olga, startled.

  “Call Vladislava Vasilisovna to the Great Hall,” she repeated. “Let her see how real rulers rule, since she is fated to follow in their footsteps.”

  “This is no place for a child, Tsarinovna, even you should be able to see that,” said Olga, trying as hard as possible to assume a superior expression as she looked at Slava. For a moment in almost worked, and Slava began to doubt herself, but then her own rightness rose up in her like a wave and drowned any residue of Olga’s self-righteousness that had contaminated her.

  “Vladislava Vasilisovna is not a child, she is the heir to Lesnograd and the Severnolesnoye province,” said Slava, impressed at how strong her voice sounded. “All judgments should be made in front of her.”

  “No!” cried Vasilisa Vasilisovna, now horrified in turn. “I won’t let her witness something like this!”

  “Why not?” asked Slava.

  “It’s horrible…Dirty…”

  “And yet you have said nothing against it, even though it is taking place right in your own Great Hall! And it will most certainly not remain a secret. You must send a report of it to Krasnograd, you know, so that all of Zem’ can look upon your judgments and caste their own judgments of your judging—is that not our law? And I, the Tsarina’s sister, am here witnessing it, so you can be sure I will spread the news of what takes place in this hall today far and wide.”

  Both Olga and Vasilisa Vasilisovna stared at Slava with the aghast expressions of people who have just been bitten by their own bedclothes, but appeared too shocked to summon up a suitable reply.