Through the White Wood

by Jessica Leake

  All around us, the other guards were being overwhelmed by the raiders.

  Time seemed to slow as the blood pounded in my ears. I could see the choices before me:

  I could summon Elation again to come to Ivan’s aid, but it wouldn’t be fast enough.

  I could help him myself, possibly injuring him or even killing him in the process.

  Or I could do nothing.

  I shook my head—the last was not an option.

  I jumped from the sleigh. The raider nearest me was caught off guard. It gave Ivan some room, and he kicked free of the men. “Katya, no!” he yelled as I inserted myself between him and the men. He wrenched at my shoulder weakly, shouting for me to move out of the way, but I ignored him.

  Just do it, I thought. These are bad men—men who will kill you if the guards fall. I thought of my promise to myself: to never release the full extent of my power again.

  But it was our only chance. Surely it was necessary.

  I outstretched my arms and willed my hands to stop shaking.

  Burn, I thought, as the cold fire poured out of my palms.

  Chapter Four

  I WOKE TO GRAY SKIES, THE soft sound of the sleigh rushing over snow, the jingle of horse harnesses, and the smell of snow in the air. I was also warmer than I’d ever remembered being, as though I’d been thrust in front of a blazing fire.

  The memories of the attack trickled in slowly. Images of the cold fire burning, spreading from raider to raider until each enemy was a motionless statue.

  Ivan, I thought. Did he survive? Had I managed to save him, or had I destroyed him with my cold fire? The last thought made me feel so sick I was afraid I’d vomit all over the sleigh. I tried to look around me but found it difficult to sit up.

  My eyebrows furrowed, and I winced against the light. What had happened to me? I thought as hard as I could, and I remembered bits and pieces. Ivan had raised his arms, and a terrible wave of something had hit me, and my power had fought back. It made me sick to think of it now: the two dueling forces. My own cold fire, and the nothingness that wanted to stifle it.

  Let go, Katya, someone had yelled—Kharan, maybe? My memories, I found, were hazy.

  As I could only stare up at the sky, I looked for Elation. I breathed a sigh of relief when her familiar form flew past, none the worse for wear despite her brave attack.

  Finally, by gripping the side of the sleigh, I managed to pull myself up slowly and held my spinning head in one hand. It throbbed along to the beat of my heart. I gasped at the pain, and Ivan called from the front of the sleigh.

  “That was my doing, I’m afraid.” He turned to peer at me briefly. “Though we appreciated your intervention, I couldn’t let you burn us all.”

  “You’re alive?” I managed, my voice sounding weak and faraway.

  “I’m alive.”

  “What happened?”

  “I told you before that I had the power to stop you, so that’s what I did. But when it came down to it, I was afraid for a moment that I wouldn’t be able to. I can negate another’s ability, but it was a real struggle with yours. It seems,” he added, “that the villagers have been telling the truth about you.”

  I thought of the men I’d turned to ice, just like the ones from my village, and a sick feeling filled my stomach. I now understood why I felt so warm—it was the heat that had accompanied my cold fire before. The delicious warmth filled me even now, though it was fading. The raiders had attacked us, and they deserved their fates, perhaps, but what of the other guardsmen? My power was so unpredictable. Fear wrapped cold hands around my throat as I turned to count the guards who rode before and behind the sleigh. All were accounted for—even Kharan’s pony, Daichin. “I didn’t kill them,” I said quietly to myself, my breath coming out in a rush.

  “Does your head hurt?” Ivan asked, turning back to me. “That’s a side effect of my power.”

  “Not badly,” I lied. Why make him feel guilty for what he had to do?

  “I’m glad. We’re minutes away from Kiev,” he added.

  Kharan must have noticed that I was sitting up, for she rode over to the side of the sleigh. “I’m glad to see you’re awake.” Her expression turned sympathetic when she saw me wincing in the sunlight. “Ivan calls that a headache, but it feels like your head is about to split wide open like a melon.”

  Ivan shook his head with a dismissive grunt, but I had to agree with Kharan. “Better this than wake up to find all of you dead.”

  She smiled. “Well, I suppose you have a point there. As it was, we had to do some pretty impressive maneuvering to stay out of the path of your cold fire. Luckily, we knew a little of what to expect. The raiders, unfortunately for them, did not.”

  The idea that my guards had to scurry out of the way of my fatal power made me feel sick. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” she said with a wave of her hand that made Daichin toss his head. “You helped us in the end, and we’ll be sure to make that clear to the prince when we all stand before him.”

  The prince. It made my head pound harder to think of being brought before him. What would my sentence be? Would I be condemned for my crimes? Executed as a criminal? Especially now, with what I’d done to the raiders. Would such destruction on my part be viewed as yet another monstrous act? I shuddered, and I could feel myself turning to ice again, as if that could help me.

  “Thank you,” I said finally to Kharan. She only nodded and urged her pony along.

  Ivan was right—in no time, the towering pines became fewer and farther between until finally they made way for snowy fields. Before us, not far in the distance, was a walled city bigger than anything I’d ever encountered. A wide, frozen river led the way in and appeared to cut right through the city itself. I spent several moments just blinking at it dumbly, trying to calculate how many people those walls contained. No less than one hundred thousand, I was sure.

  Slowly, my fears of the prince were drowned out by another worry. My assumptions of what Kiev would be like had proven to be horribly ill-informed. I’d imagined a large village—perhaps twice the size of my own—not hundreds of times that size and surrounded by a great stone wall. At home, Elation had remained in the surrounding forest, never far away. The beautiful tent had reminded me of a gilded cage, but how would Elation feel following me to a place completely outside her normal hunting range?

  There was nowhere safe for her here.

  I looked up at her and held out my arm, tears burning in my throat.

  She landed on my proffered arm, and I rested my head on her soft feathers. “You must stay in the forest,” I said. “You can’t follow any farther, or you’ll become as trapped as I shall be. I won’t ask that of you.”

  She tilted her head and gazed at me with one amber eye.

  “It was wrong of me to ask you to come so far in the first place. I’ll be fine,” I told her, though I knew I wouldn’t. “I’ll come to see you as soon as I can.” I hoped that part, at least, was true.

  She met my gaze one last time and then lowered her head. I touched my forehead to her soft feathers, trying not to cry.

  But when her powerful wings carried her away from me, my shoulders slumped as a sob escaped anyway.

  “The prince keeps many birds of prey in his mews,” Ivan said, turning to look at me with sympathy. “None are as impressive as the one who’s been your companion, but others may remind you of her, at least.”

  I smiled gratefully and brushed away my tears. “Kharan mentioned that before,” I said, catching her eye. “Thank you. That will help, I’m sure.”

  Ivan grunted before turning back around.

  “I’m sorry, Katya,” Kharan said. “I know how difficult this must be for you.”

  “I don’t want her to feel trapped in such a crowded city,” I said. I don’t want her to share the same fate as me, I thought but didn’t say.

  Kharan must have guessed some of what I was thinking anyway, for she reached out across the side
of the sleigh and touched my arm. “I understand,” she said.

  I sank into my fear and misery as the walls of Kiev loomed closer and closer until finally we rode through a heavily guarded gate.

  The city was bustling with activity. Merchants stood in front of colorful tents, and people trudged through snowy ground to buy their bread, or furs, or linen. The air smelled of snow and woodsmoke and baking bread, so much like my own village that I could close my eyes and almost imagine I was home again.

  It was loud, though—much louder than I was used to. Animals braying, people laughing, merchants shouting, and a blacksmith beating out horseshoes on his anvil. If this was life in Kiev, then what could I expect from the prince’s palace? Would it be just as chaotic and unfamiliar?

  A man with yellow teeth and a ratty coat appeared beside my sleigh, hefting a dead-eyed fish in my face.

  “Caught fresh just before the freeze,” he shouted.

  Grigory shouldered his horse into the man, nearly knocking him off his feet. “Be gone with you,” he said in a snarl.

  I reached out a hand to him, sorry that he was treated so badly, but the man only shook his fish angrily after us.

  The man, as it turned out, was not the only one to recognize our party as a potential source of revenue, and we were soon set upon by both merchants and beggars. It was the poorly dressed children, though, the ones trying to sell a single candle or a bit of wool, who wrenched my heart out of my chest and made me beg Ivan to stop for them.

  “We can’t stop here,” Ivan said. “Not with all the trunks and tents. There’s nothing you can do for the poor beggars now.”

  I sat back against the sleigh, sickened by my own impotence. I watched as Kharan slipped them a coin or two, though, and felt my spirits lift marginally.

  We progressed through the market and arrived at a wide bridge, filled with carts and people leading animals over a frozen river.

  “The Dnieper River,” Kharan said helpfully, but I was too distracted by the palace looming in the distance.

  Grigory and the others shouted at the people to make way, which they did with wide eyes and curious looks, and then we were gliding over the snowy bridge.

  This side of the bridge was clearly where the wealthy resided, with sturdy wooden houses five times the size of the small fletched huts I spied near the marketplace, and a snowy white cathedral with a rounded dome roof and a golden cross.

  The horses perked up as we drew closer to the palace, their heads eagerly pointed toward home, where warm stables, hay, and grain would be waiting.

  For me, though, there was only a cold dread.

  If the marketplace was overwhelming, the palace up close rendered me incapable of speech. It loomed over us, its stone as gray as thunder clouds. It seemed as wide as the city itself, though where the marketplace was colorful and loud, the palace was as still and silent as a mountain. It had two towers and a church—designated with a rounded roof and a smaller version of the golden cross I spied earlier at the cathedral—attached to the central palace building. The result was a veritable mountain of stone. Coming from a village made entirely of wood, such a sight took my breath away.

  The men dismounted while servants arrived to lead the horses away, and to retrieve the trunks and tents. The palace courtyard was filled with people—page boys, servants, and attendants, but also men who wore swords at their belts and led great war chargers. They watched me with unabashed interest, and I managed a nervous smile or two, though my focus was on what lay ahead.

  Kharan stayed by my side, but I could only think about what was to come.

  On who waited for me within.

  A woman with a bright-red scarf tied around her head came to kiss Ivan on the cheek—his wife?—and then laughed as he swung her around like a girl.

  When he put her down again, he turned and held his hand out to me. “This is my wife, Vera,” he said as I climbed down from the sleigh.

  “Katya,” she said, taking hold of my cold cheeks with both of her warm, calloused hands. “I am glad you arrived safely.”

  Being treated as a guest was disorienting, but it managed to dim some of my fear—at least for a moment.

  “Was it an easy trip?” she asked her husband.

  Ivan hesitated. “For the most part.”

  I was curious why he withheld mention of the raider attack, but I decided it would be better for me not to interfere. Already she watched Ivan with narrowed eyes. She’d no doubt find out on her own.

  “Come, devotchka, let’s bring you inside out of the snow,” Vera said, turning her attention back to me. She directed me toward the palace doors with bustling movements. “The prince has been waiting for you in the throne room.”

  I slowed to a stop and couldn’t convince my body to move.

  The soft sound of boots on snow announced someone’s presence next to me, and then Kharan put her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go with you, Katya.”

  Ivan stepped closer to me, too. “And I.”

  I nodded even as I briefly contemplated bolting, but I remembered the last time I’d considered such a thing. And if Ivan was strong enough to stop my cold fire . . . Besides, where would I go? Who would even help me? I would have to bide my time and wait for an opportunity for escape. If I wasn’t sentenced to death first.

  Reluctantly, I followed Vera with Ivan and Kharan close behind me. Beyond the double wooden doors, the palace awaited, ablaze with light from sconces all along the walls. The ceiling soared above our heads, and our boots echoed across the stone floors. There were tapestries with battle and hunting scenes, ones of exotic animals and flora and fauna of all kinds. They were beautiful, but I couldn’t appreciate any of them. All I could think about was the prince.

  Every rumor I’d ever heard ran through my mind. He’d killed his own parents. He collected people with powers to form a dark army of his own. Others—like the men in my village—said he wasn’t forming an army at all but was instead drinking the blood of those with power like an upyr. I hadn’t allowed myself to believe that last rumor. All accounts said he was cruel, arrogant, and selfish, so ugly inside that his face was scarred and disfigured to reflect the evil within.

  But he gave me a tent of my own, and a chest full of clothes, I thought.

  Nothing made sense, and it was this feeling of not fully knowing what to expect that scared me more than anything else.

  All too soon we arrived outside the doors of the throne room. I tried not to let my fear show as Ivan stepped forward and pulled open the heavy door. I walked into a cavernous hall, the ceilings above me arched, lit by iron chandeliers. More tapestries lined the walls here, and battle scenes with men and swords and horses blurred by me as I passed. Page boys and men dressed in dark tunics with swords belted at their waists lined the walls.

  There at the end of the hall was a wooden throne, and the man seated upon it stood as we approached. Even from this distance I could see he was elegantly dressed, all in black—his clothes matched his dark hair. My mouth went dry and my skin began to harden.

  Each step seemed to take far too long, as though we were slogging through mud, and I was far too aware of my own shallow breaths. And when we finally got close enough, I saw that the man standing in front of the throne was not a man at all but a boy not much older than I.

  He was nothing like I’d imagined. Not the old, heavily bearded man I’d expected—Grigory fit the description more than he. This boy was tall and beardless, his hair thick and dark but with glints of auburn. When his eyes met mine, I saw that while his body might have been young, his eyes were those of a man much older and wiser, piercing and silver as a wolf’s pelt.

  And he was beautiful—a cold, stunning beauty. But I knew that it was often beautiful people who were the most cruel.

  “You are in the presence of the grand prince of Kievan Rus’,” announced one of the two guards who flanked him, “Alexander Konstantinov.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kharan bow from her waist, han
ds steepled in respect. Awkwardly, I tried to curtsy as best I could. The highest-ranking person I’d ever stood before was our village elder—a far cry from the grand prince of all of Kievan Rus’.

  “Thank you for answering my summons, Ekaterina Alexeyevna,” the prince said, as if I hadn’t been escorted here under armed guard. His voice was deeper than I’d thought it would be, with a rough edge, like he wasn’t used to speaking much. He turned to Ivan. “Was the journey uneventful?”

  “We encountered raiders, Gosudar. On the main path to Kiev. They ambushed us from the forest—perhaps fifty men in total.”

  Vera stiffened in surprise next to me, shooting her husband a glance, but the prince’s expression never changed. He appeared unsurprised—unconcerned, even. And I wondered if Kharan was wrong in thinking that he cared for his people.

  “Fifty?” the prince repeated, turning his attention to Kharan now. “This is a bigger band of raiders than you’d heard about, isn’t it?”

  “Twenty was the original number,” Kharan said, her tone grave. “Few enough that they should have been easy to defeat. Fifty, though, was nearly our undoing.”

  “Yet everyone remained unharmed?” this was addressed to Ivan, who nodded.

  “Yes, Gosudar, though we might not have escaped unscathed were it not for Katya’s help.”

  I felt the full force of the prince’s attention on me, and I stood up straighter. “It seems I owe you my thanks, then, as it was I who sent all of you on the raiders’ path.”

  A little jolt of surprise ran through me. The prince had ordered his men to take such a route? One that, by the sound of it, had been almost certain to result in a confrontation. I thought of Ivan becoming overwhelmed, of Kharan’s beloved horse nearly being shot with an arrow, of the sheer number of men that had poured from those trees. A cold anger grew inside me. How could the prince put his people at risk like this?