He took the balalaika out of its storage shelf and unwrapped it from the layers of silk surrounding it. Slinging it over his back, he went hunting in the kitchens for some breakfast and a wash-up.
Then fed, clean, and ready to go to work, he strode out to face the day.
The sun was barely a sliver above the horizon when he made his first stop. Magic and The Tradition being what they were, it was often just as effective to use a symbol for something as the thing itself. And in this case, the Royal cattle herd stood for all the cattle in the kingdom.
It was, and had always been, possible to steer The Tradition through songs and stories. It was only that it was a bit tricky and took a lot of planning to successfully pull it off.
And you had to start with good material; in the case of a song, it had to be—well—singable. Memorable. Something that people liked to sing themselves of a winter night in a tavern.
Sasha had a talent for creating just that sort of song out of the most unlikely of subject matter, such as the health of cattle.
He stationed himself right inside the fence surrounding their pasture, made sure his instrument was in tune, and began the song he called “My Little Brown Cow.”
It was an absurd little piece, really. It was sung in the persona of a herdsman, boasting about his prize milch-cow, and claiming more and wilder abilities for her with each verse, then turning it all around in a chorus that admitted that the claims might be stretching the truth a bit but that there was no doubt that this cow, and every cow in the Kingdom of Led Belarus for that matter, was the healthiest, happiest, most perfect specimen of its kind in all of the Five Hundred Kingdoms.
The cattle listened with bovine interest; the herdsmen sang along on the chorus. And once again, The Tradition was thwarted. Or at least, it was convinced to ensure that the cattle of Led Belarus were plump, fertile, and tractable.
From the cattle pasture to the sheep enclosure he went, with a variant on the cattle song. On the way there, he sang what he thought of as the “Perfect Day” ditty, in which he extolled the weather in Led Belarus, with the chorus suggesting that every day was a perfect day here with enough sun, enough rain, fall not coming too early, spring not arriving too late.
He had a song for every sort of livestock, actually, and he sang them as often as he could. He had found that each sort of herdsman was, in general, very proprietary about the animals he or she cared for, and they liked having songs about their charges. From the goose-girl to the breeder of fine horses, he had created a song for each of them and it was a fair bet that over the course of a day, a person who was paying attention would hear several, if not all of them.
And all of them created Traditional paths that ensured that Led Belarus was living up to the songs.
He’d taken the precaution of filling a wallet with food, but as it happened, he didn’t need to eat what he’d brought, for around about noon, he ran into a wedding.
Now this was the best possible encounter for his purpose. Everyone knew Sasha the Fool, and when people knew they would not be the butt of his foolery, they welcomed him. When he was walking about with instrument in hand, he could go just about anywhere and be welcomed.
Especially at a wedding.
His wanderings had taken him down to the little village of Chersk down below the Palace, and he encountered the wedding party coming out of the church. They swept him up in their wake and the next thing he knew, he was being plied alternately with food and drink and requests to sing.
He embarrassed the bride, of course—it was expected that he sing at least one song about all the fat, happy babies she was going to produce, with some sly innuendos that no one was going to be very strict in counting the number of months between the wedding and the first of them. People would have been disappointed if he hadn’t made the bride blush. He also managed to work in some songs about weddings in general that he hoped would shove The Tradition in the direction of a nice bride for his brother. Someone pretty, and pleasant, who was prepared to make friends with her husband. Just because this was going to be a marriage of state, it didn’t follow that husband and wife needed to make each other miserable.
The wedding feast was “peasant fare,” but Sasha had learned long ago never to ask what was in his sausage. He ate and drank and sang with a will, and heard no complaints from anyone. He played a few harmless pranks, things guaranteed to make sober and nervous people comfortable.
Then, as the afternoon passed into evening, he returned to the Palace long enough to pack a saddlebag and get his horse. It was time to make his rounds of the Kingdom and for that he would need several days. He told Yasha where he was going; that was enough warning. It wasn’t as if anyone at the Palace needed him specifically.
Whenever he decided to make a round of the Kingdom, it was always like this—on impulse.
By the time he finished packing and carried his bags out to the stable, his horse was waiting, saddled and bridled. This was a solid, calm beast of the North Wind get; the gelding had none of the North Wind horses’ good looks, but a great deal of sense and an unflappable nature. Sasha needed that…just in case.
Because he wasn’t just singing prosperity into the land. As soon as the sun went down, Sasha went hunting when he made his rounds.
The signs that evil was trying to make its way into Led Belarus were obvious. And they should be, as Sasha had specified in his songs exactly what evil-doers said and did the moment they entered his Kingdom and started on their own nefarious plans. They might think they were acting on their own, but The Tradition, directed by Sasha, was making them give telltale signs. All Sasha had to do was look for them….
And on his third day out, he found them, too.
There it was. A stretch along the border where the woods suddenly turned…dark. Haunted. Where the trees looked as if they might actually snatch you up and use you as fertilizer, and where every path seemed to close in on you the moment you set foot on it.
Sasha smiled to see it. This was precisely as he wanted it.
He turned back on the road to the village he had just passed through. And he knew without even asking that the villagers would tell him not to go there. So he didn’t trouble them with what he was going to do. After all, he knew what he was doing; he’d written the song.
Sasha left his horse at the inn and walked about the village, making a few inquiries about that place in the forest that the locals were starting to avoid. The answers he got gave him some relief. It wasn’t bad yet. No children had gone missing. No travelers had vanished, or at least, none that anyone was aware of. But horses didn’t want to go in there, mules flatly refused to, the birds avoided it except for ravens—
All those things were the signs that something nasty was trying to get established in Led Belarus by stealth.
Ha. You do not know who you are dealing with, whatever you are.
He would neither say nor think, “You’re welcome to try,” because whatever it was, it most assuredly was not welcome in his Kingdom, but when a thing was attempting to get in, thus far, he had been able to seize it by the metaphorical ear and throw it out again.
He went on foot to the “troubled place” as the locals were calling it, waiting until they were all at their dinners so that no one would notice where he was going. Very often locals took a dim view of someone meddling with such places, and wisely, too. Meddling could stir up things best left alone, when said meddling was done by someone who had no idea what he was doing.
But Sasha had written the song.
With his balalaika slung on his back, he made his way afoot. The road moved into the forest itself, trees arching over it, making a green tunnel that was very pleasant to walk inside. This was the part of the job he relished, the parts where everything was lovely and normal, but where he knew he was about to face an unknown foe of unknown strength, which made all the peace that much sweeter.
Sometimes the transition from “normal forest” to “possessed forest” was subtle. This time, it
was not.
On one side of the path, the last light of early evening lingered pleasantly on the land, sending mellow beams of light slanting down through the leaves. The forest floor was cushioned by leaf litter aged to a warm gold. Birds were coming in to roost, twittering softly to each other as they settled in for the night. In the far distance, he caught a glimpse of a stag slipping warily between the trees.
On the other side of the path—
The last light of early evening was swallowed by shadows that were just a little too dark, just a trifle too cold. The air was damp and chill, and felt like the air of the last days of dying autumn. The forest floor was covered in the blackened skeletons of leaves, scabrous grey and charcoal, that shattered like ancient bones when walked on. There were no birds, no animals in sight, and the air smelled of rot and mildew.
So the battle lines were drawn.
Sasha pulled his balalaika around to the front and began to strum it.
The first song he sang was for his own benefit; it was a riddle-song that was designed to tell him exactly what sort of creature it was that he faced. Was it some evil thing out of legend, was it a demon, or was it a very powerful ghost? He sang the riddles and read the answer in the rattle of the dry branches, the sighing of the wind, and a glimpse here and there through the trees of something moving.
Rusalka came the answer, and he sighed. This would be both easy and hard. Easy, because the Rusalkas were quite single-minded and at the same time, not very tenacious. Hard, because the Rusalkas, whether they were ghosts or water-spirits, by and large were born of the anger and despair of young women who had drowned themselves, usually over a young man. And he, of course, was a young man. The Rusalka would try to seduce him in order to do him the same favor, and when she could not…
Well, now, this was where he had to be clever, persuasive, and if need be, ruthless.
But first he had to find her pond. Because a Rusalka always lived in a body of still water.
To do that, however, he would first have to get through the forest. The forest knew what he was, even if the Rusalka was not aware that he was here.
This could be very tricky.
Sasha stood on the bank of the Rusalka’s pond, picking twigs out of his hair. The forest had not wanted him to get through. It hadn’t been strong enough to actually prevent his passage, but it had made it as difficult as possible, trying to protect its progenitor.
But of course, it wasn’t all that intelligent, and couldn’t know that it was actually telling him the way. When it yielded, Sasha knew he was going in the wrong direction. When it blocked him, he knew he was on the right path. The more it tried to prevent his passage, the closer he knew he was.
There was no doubt that this was his goal. The pond and its surroundings were a curious mixture of ethereal beauty and shadowy menace. The pond itself was bathed in moonlight. Or at least, what appeared to be moonlight. The only trouble with that was that the moon wasn’t up. The water was crystalline clear, so clear that it was easy to see the gracefully waving streamers of water plants and the tiny silver fish that darted among them. Of course, the moment anyone entered the water, those harmless-looking plants would wrap themselves around the victim and pull him under, and the little silver fish would strip him down to the bone.
Everything here told him that she was here, and thought she was here to stay.
Now what Sasha did to her was going to depend entirely on what she was. If she was a ghost, and there was any vestige of humanity left in her, he would try and touch it, to awaken her conscience and maybe, just maybe, persuade her to leave on her own.
If, however, she was nothing but hate…
Well, in a lot of ways, that would be easier. Harder, in terms of a fight, but easier in terms of reducing the problem to a situation of pure black and white. She would be evil, he would be good, and he would have no compunction about singing her into oblivion if he had to.
“Who are you, who lingers at the water’s edge?” came a voice from behind him. It was a sweet voice, yet cold, as if the sweetness was a mask over something much darker. There was an echoing quality to it, and the sense that the speaker was somehow not altogether in this world.
He turned.
Like the pond, the young woman before him was a mixture of ethereal beauty and menace, although he doubted that most men would notice the “menacing” aspect. She was dressed in a simple gown of white with silver and pale blue embroidery at the throat, the wrists, and the hem. Her long, silvery-blond hair flowed down her back like a waterfall. She was slender, delicate, and very pale. There was a transparency about her that told him that this was, indeed, a ghost. He wondered how she had died. How it had happened would have a lot of bearing on what was going on in her mind.
And her eyes were utterly empty. Though he doubted most men would recognize that either.
But her expression changed the moment she got a good look at him, from sweetly cold to shocked.
He had anticipated any number of reactions on her part, but shock wasn’t one of them.
“You!” she exclaimed.
He lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t believe we’ve met?” he replied, carefully. “I certainly do not recall ever seeing you before this moment, and believe me, I have a very good memory for names and faces.”
But she was already backing away from him, drifting just an inch above the grass, her hands upraised. “If I had known that this was your Kingdom…Do not touch that instrument! I have no wish to be sung into oblivion!” Her expression turned angry and sour. “Just let me withdraw in peace. I will find somewhere else. You have won, I have lost and—”
He felt suddenly guilty, even though he had not done anything, and went on the defensive. “Of course I won’t let you settle in to my Kingdom! You Rusalkas lure men to their deaths! Any young man, any man at all that crosses your path! You don’t even trouble to discover if they deserve any punishment, much less that!” He glared at her. “Of course I sing Rusalkas into oblivion, or at least, out of my kingdom! What do you expect?”
She bristled; her shoulders squared, and her eyes flashed. “I haven’t lured any young men to their—”
And then she stopped, and a faint flush came over her cheeks. She looked first embarrassed, then mortified.
He blinked. “You haven’t? But I thought—that’s what all Rusalkas did.”
“Well of course we want you to think that’s what we all do!” she exclaimed, now bright red. “This is what a Rusalka is! Only…it…isn’t. Not always. Not…even…mostly.”
“Since the only other Rusalkas I have encountered were certainly luring men, young and old, to drown, you can scarcely blame me for assuming that common knowledge was accurate,” he pointed out dryly. He wondered if he could believe her. He wanted to believe her. Then he looked about, spotted a rock, and sat down on it. “All right, then, tell me—”
He was interrupted at that moment by a whinnying scream and the flash of three glowing white bodies charging out of the forest, heading straight for the Rusalka. With a scream of her own, the Rusalka dove into the water, and the unicorns skidded to a halt at the edge, snorting and dancing with fury.
“We have come to save you, Prince!” one of them shouted, shaking her horn menacingly at the Rusalka, who had poked her head cautiously above the water. It was a sign of her otherworldly nature that her hair wasn’t the least wet, though it floated around her on the surface of the water.
“We will not let this creature of evil harm you!” said another, her hooves thudding on the ground as she reared and curveted.
Safe in the water, since the unicorns were hardly going to go in after her, the Rusalka looked from Sasha to the unicorns and back again, with puzzlement at first, and then the dawning recognition of why they were there. She put her hand up to her mouth, and burst out laughing.
Sasha gritted his teeth. “Don’t say what you are thinking,” he warned. “My patience is not endless.”
“I would not venture a word,�
� the Rusalka said, then laughed again.
The unicorns stopped dancing angrily, and looked from Sasha to the Rusalka and back again. And back to Sasha. And back to the Rusalka.
“Um,” said one, hesitantly. “A problem…”
“No problem,” said the first immediately, tossing her head. “This is a creature of darkness!”
“But…” the hesitant one said, as she dropped her head to sniff at the water. “A virgin creature of darkness…”
It was the Rusalka’s turn to flush as bright a red as a ghost could manage.
“No problem,” insisted the first, who was evidently the leader of this group. “That is a female. So are we, and we do not protect females. And she is a creature of darkness. We destroy creatures of darkness. Virginity doesn’t enter into it.” “But…”
“I’m sure there are virgin creatures of darkness all the time,” the leader retorted, stamping her forehoof. “The fact that they are virgins does not make them good or worthy of protection. I would guess that most creatures of darkness are virgins, unless part of their darkness is that they seduce men. After all, who would want to take one to bed if he were not being deceived in the first place?”
The Rusalka flung her head up, angrily, and glared at the unicorns with a dangerous expression. “Now look—” she began hotly.
The leader of the unicorns continued on, ignoring the Rusalka altogether. “It is a creature of darkness. It is a female. We are female, and we do not protect females. It is menacing our Prince—”
“I wasn’t menacing anyone!” the Rusalka said indignantly.
“—therefore, no prob—”
An equine scream rang through the forest again, interrupting the unicorn. A fourth gloriously white body slammed through the underbrush and skidded to a halt beside the pond. The very male unicorn reared, pawing the air with his silver hooves and brandishing his pearlescent horn. “Begone, wretched, bestial man!” he shouted. “Unhand that virgin! Maiden, I have co—”
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