by Rosalyn Eves
I glowered at her, thinking the night shadows would hide my expression, but she laughed. We had never spent so much time alone together, but as we paced the trail—the lidérc unflagging as I sweated and gasped—I could not help feeling a sort of kinship with her. When I first came to Hungary, Noémi had told me of the lidérc as a means to scare me, and I had dreamed of her kind as something nightmarish: the lidércnyomás that was a Hungarian word for night terror, the weight of a lidérc perched on your chest, pressing the life from you. I had seen her months later, in the streets of Buda-Pest, hunting the soldiers who threatened my friends, and though her mouth had been crimson with blood, she had not seemed so nightmarish then.
Now, in the moonlight, her goose feet dusty and cracking, she seemed so familiar I could not believe I had ever been frightened.
“Why do the others call you ‘lidérc’?” I had wondered this for weeks now but had not known how to ask. “Don’t you have a name?”
The lidérc turned her black eyes on me, and at once she was no longer familiar or ordinary but a creature who could kill me before I drew another breath. “You should not ask a praetherian her name if it is not freely given. Names have power, and you have not earned the right to mine.”
The cool air was bitter on my tongue as I inhaled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
I wanted to ask her more, about her childhood, about her years in the Binding, but her closed expression said she would not welcome such questions from me. In any case, if we were being followed, it was safer to keep silent.
The trail toward the castle was steep, but at least it was maintained, unlike the one we’d forged across the valley. I tried to recall what I’d heard of the castle and its current inmates. At length, we reached the lower walls and a guardhouse. The rest of the castle perched sheer and grim above us, only a few lights still flickering in the darkness.
There were two gates here: a larger arched gate for carriages and carts and a smaller pedestrian entrance set to the left of the main entrance. A square guard tower squatted in the corner, narrow slits forming the only windows.
I knocked on the smaller gate, trying to corral my thoughts into some kind of sense. What could I say that would persuade them to help us free Mátyás? That there had been a rockslide? Or that he had been captured by praetheria?
There was a squealing sound as the hinges shifted and the wooden door swung open. A middle-aged man stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over a heavy belly. “Ja? Was wollen Sie?”
“There’s been a rockslide. My cousin is trapped in the ice caves across the valley. We need some strong men to free him,” I said in German.
“Your cousin is likely dead.” The man rubbed his balding scalp. “And this is a prison, not a rescue service.”
“Please,” I said, adopting my most pious “young lady” expression—and momentarily forgetting that I was dressed as a young man, not a woman. “Surely you can spare a few men. We will pay you.” I hoped—I was not altogether certain how much money we had between Bahadır’s purse and the one stowed in my bag.
The lidérc whispered in Hungarian, “Tell him Mátyás is táltos and should not be left to die.”
The man’s eyes swung to the lidérc, flickering from her rather severe features to her dusty feet. He recoiled as though shot, his hand shaping a cross in the air before him.
“Get that Ungeheuer away from here!” he said, scurrying behind the wooden door and slamming it shut.
The lidérc stared, unblinking, at the door. “What is ‘Ungeheuer’?”
I took her stiff arm, gently. “Let’s go.”
“Tell me! Monster, ogre, devil? What is it?”
“Monster,” I said reluctantly, wishing I could soften the ugliness of the word. It hung in the dark air between us, the shadows around us rustling with whispers of unspeakable things.
The lidérc blinked once, her eyes still fixed on the door. “He might have helped Mátyás, if not for me.”
I sighed. “I don’t think he meant to help us, even before he saw you. And his prejudice is not your fault.”
She bared her teeth, exposing their sharp edges in the moonlight. “I may not be responsible for his beliefs, but I must live with them anyway.”
She turned away from the walled castle and stomped back down the mountainside. I followed, wishing I could undo the world with a spell, as I had the Binding, and reforge a world where the lidérc and other praetheria would not constantly walk under the weight of another person’s hate.
In the next breath I remembered Mátyás, trapped in the ice caves with praetheria who had hunted us. Where did this tangle of hate begin and end? The praetheria hated humans because we had trapped them in the Binding spell and then abused them when they were released; and humans hated the praetheria because we feared them and saw in them our own hate reflected. With a flush of shame, I realized I was not absolved in this: I had brought the praetheria into a world unprepared for them, and I too had feared them, had seen them as something other than what I was. I was learning to overcome that fear, to see the praetheria, like the lidérc, as beings with a center of self as distinct and complex as my own. Still, learning was only a start, a small coin set against the recompense we owed them. Humans had been—were—wrong in our treatment of the praetheria. But I could not believe praetherian vengeance would right that wrong, only multiply it.
Maybe I should not reforge the world, if I had my wish. Maybe I should burn it down.
The lidérc was already mounted when I reached the horses. I swung myself up, grateful for the thousandth time for my trousers. (Really, why were women’s clothes so impractical? It’s as though designers wanted to incapacitate us.)
Ahead of us, the trail disappeared into shadows. The night seemed to be growing darker. I glanced upward to see if the moon had shifted behind a mountain peak or if a cloud had passed across it—and every muscle in my body stilled. Darkness sliced across the edge of the moon.
The lidérc noticed. “What’s wrong?” Her tone was softer than it had been earlier.
“The moon—it’s not right.”
She followed my upward gaze, then grinned. “A lunar eclipse. Have you never seen one?”
I shook my head, feeling foolish. I might have guessed what it was, had not the events of the day predisposed me to spooking at shadows. “I have heard of society parties to watch eclipses, but I have never been to one, and Mama did not think it proper for me to be out of doors at midnight.”
“My mother told me the only proper place for a lidérc at midnight was beneath the skies,” she replied, still smiling, and I grinned back. She’d never shared anything of her own life with me before. That breath of lightness lifted some of the fury still coursing through me after our encounter at the castle.
We did not slow our pace as we rode back across the valley, but we watched the sky as the shadows crept over the face of the moon, and the white orb slowly turned rusty, then the darker shade of old blood.
Riding beneath the broad dark sky and the carnelian moon, I felt a glimmer of hope. The magnificence in the sky was part of a regular cycle: the moon would change whether it had an audience or not, whether humans reigned, or praetheria, or both, or neither. Somehow that permanence in the face of everything uncertain in my life steadied me. Whatever choices we made, they were not irredeemable. Life would go on, somehow.
That hope sustained me until we reached the clearing where we had left Bahadır.
Mátyás’s ugly white horse, Holdas, was missing. So was Bahadır. Bahadır’s horse was pulling at her tether, her nostrils flared and wild, her mane matted with sweat.
The lidérc slid off her mount in a sinuous movement and crouched down. She set her fingers against a dark patch on the grass, then lifted them to her nose. “Blood,” she said, frowning.
I was still unraveling the implications of t
he lidérc’s finding (Whose blood was it?) when a shadow barreled out of the trees, knocking the lidérc to the ground. She screamed, but it was a scream of rage, not terror.
The shadowy figure raised his arm, and moonlight spun across a metal blade and caught in the horns protruding from a darkly matted head. His chest was bare, and a tail protruded from the back of his trousers.
The satyr from the caves.
He sliced his weapon down, and the lidérc rolled away. She tried to scramble upright but fell back with a cry. She’d been injured in her fall.
I nudged my horse forward, riding at the satyr. He leapt aside and swiped something at my mount’s flank. The horse reared up, depositing me on my backside on the ground, my teeth jarring together, and the satyr rushed me.
As I felt frantically around for a weapon, my fingers closed on a rock the size of a small apple. I was useless in this kind of fight. Against a magician, I might break a spell, but against sheer brute force, I had nothing, not even the training a young man would have as part of his schooling.
I lobbed the rock at the satyr. It missed his head, which I’d been aiming for, but struck his shoulder. The blow didn’t accomplish anything useful, however, as he continued to advance on me. I clambered to my feet.
“Run, Anna,” he said, mimicking Mátyás’s cadences with eerie accuracy.
I stumbled backward, and my heel caught on a root. Only the desperate windmilling of my arms saved me from falling. The satyr laughed.
“Is that all the resistance you can muster? I expected some fight, at least.”
The satyr caught my shoulders and shoved, and I reeled back, falling to the ground.
Some hero, I thought. I can’t even stand my own ground.
The satyr fished a length of twine from a pocket and advanced again. I scuttled to one side, away from his reach, and froze.
Some distance from us, a gentle glowing light bobbed uncertainly between the trees. I squinted at it. Was it a lantern? Someone coming belatedly to help us? The light began to grow, expanding like a small sun, a beacon in the darkness. The swelling light pulled a sweet-bitter note of longing from me.
I didn’t know what the source of the glowing sphere was, but I had to reach it. The light promised to slake every thirst, fill every half-named desire, meet every ache of need I’d ever felt. I was on my knees, then my feet, scrambling forward before my wits caught up with me.
The satyr pushed past me, running toward the light, and an unreasoning fury burned through me, that he would reach it before me.
“Anna!” someone called, and the light seemed to fade, its pull weakening. I blinked, both fury and need draining from me.
“It’s only a projection,” said the lidérc. “Part of my glamour. Useful for hunting but not much else.” Her breathing was heavy, her words punctuated by panting. “We’ve only got a few minutes before he sees through the glamour and returns. Help me!”
She was still sitting on the ground, her face pale and set, her lips pinched together. One hand was clamped around an ankle. “I don’t know if I’ve turned it or if it’s broken.”
I helped her to her feet, and she winced as she limped to her horse. Somehow, with much pulling on her part and much pushing on mine, we got her into the saddle. She rode forward, slashing the leash of Bahadır’s horse with a knife so the beast could follow us.
I swung myself into my own saddle, grunting as my mount’s trotting gate jostled my bruises. The trot turned to a canter, then a gallop across the valley floor.
It was not long—perhaps five minutes—before we heard hooves pounding behind us. I swung around to see Bahadır’s horse. But the horse was not alone; she had been commandeered. A horned shadow crouched across the saddle.
The lidérc hunched over her saddle, urging her horse faster. “Damnation.” She’d picked up a few of Mátyás’s speaking habits. “We can’t fight, not wounded as I am. We’ll have to outrun him.”
Night was edging into morning, the faintest grey sweeping the horizon. I blinked hard, willing my body not to slip into exhaustion. “We won’t be able to keep up this pace much longer,” I said. Already my horse breathed heavy, sweat dampening her neck.
The lidérc sighed. “You’re right, though that is a consideration the satyr will not share.”
“Can you fight him from horseback?”
“I can—until he stabs the horse from beneath me.” She grimaced. “If I weren’t injured, we could abandon the horses and try our luck at hiding and hope to lose him.”
I tugged on my reins. My horse slowed with a long, whuffing exhale. “Give me your dagger,” I said, injecting more sureness into my voice than I felt. “I’ll try to hold him off while you run.”
The lidérc pulled to a stop. “Can you wield a dagger without stabbing yourself?”
“Yes,” I said, somewhat indignantly. I’d handled daggers before, though I ruthlessly suppressed the memory of stabbing Mátyás with a bone knife. I might not be adept, but I could be trusted to know the point from the haft.
The lidérc urged her mount beside mine and handed me a dagger, sliding a second one into her own hand.
We hadn’t long to wait. Within moments, the satyr appeared, Bahadır’s horse clearly struggling to maintain her pace, her sides heaving. At the sight of us, the satyr slowed and unsheathed a short sword at his side.
He charged the lidérc first. She parried his thrust, her blade sliding beneath his guard to leave a dark line across his forearm. He hissed, and charged his mount toward her, crushing her injured leg between the two horses. She cried out and dropped her dagger, and the satyr swung his sword. The heavy pommel connected with the side of her head with a sickening crack, and she tumbled forward, to rest across the withers of her horse.
The satyr trotted toward me, his horse trembling beneath him. I held my dagger before me like a talisman, and prayed I did not embarrass myself.
I managed to parry his first attack, though the shock of the impact rattled my bones and buzzed in my head like the aftermath of a spell. As his arm shifted for another thrust, I tightened my sweat-slicked grip on the lidérc’s dagger.
I’m sorry, Mátyás. I didn’t run far enough or fast enough.
A crack like a heavy branch snapping splintered the dawn, and the satyr toppled from his horse.
When the satyr did not move, I slid down from my saddle and rushed to the lidérc, too grateful for the unexpected reprieve to wonder much at it. She still breathed, though her face was ashen. A trickle of blood ran down her temple. I eased her out of her saddle, huffing as her weight fell against me, which nearly dropped us both. I dragged her away from the horses, laid her down on the ground, and covered her with a blanket scrounged from one of her saddlebags.
Then I straightened, sighing, and turned to deal with the satyr’s body.
But someone had already beaten me to the task. Where the body had lain, a girl now stood; her hand was stroking the neck of Bahadır’s mare.
I recognized her at once. It was Emilija, daughter of the Croatian general who had hunted me from Vienna. Following Vasilisa’s attack, we’d left her unconscious in a hospital in Buda-Pest. She was conscious now, dressed once more in her Sereshan’s uniform: the telltale red mantle, short brown jacket with red braiding, white trousers, blue socks, and sandals. Even in the dim early-morning light, she looked crisp and well rested, whereas I was nearly frayed through with exhaustion.
“Where is my dog?” Emilija asked. Her forthrightness was coupled with an edge that betrayed her fear. That her first concern was for her dog made her seem more human than she had in the two days she’d held me captive. Her dog, a beautiful Dalmatian that had helped her track me down, had been injured when Vasilisa attacked us. But the dog could not stay at the hospital with Emilija.
“I left him with a journalist—Borbála Dobos—in Vienna. She will keep him s
afe until you can fetch him.”
How had Emilija picked up my trail but not that of her Dalmatian? Perhaps she saw me as a duty and her beloved dog as a luxury.
Her relief was palpable, lightening her stern face and lifting her shoulders. “Thank you.” She leveled her pistol at me. “But I must still return you to Vienna and the emperor’s justice.”
At once it was too much: the ice caves, the frantic scramble down the mountainside, the midnight ride to the castle, the harried escape from the satyr, only to come to the same place I’d stood a lifetime ago, when Emilija had first captured me.
I dropped to the ground and began to laugh. I might have cried a bit too.
Emilija flipped one of her neat braids over her shoulder and eyed me askance. “Are you…Have you gone mad?”
“No,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes. “It is all of a piece with my life right now. Of course you should arrive to save us from certain capture by the praetheria, just to doom me to execution at the emperor’s hands. Is this how you thank me for saving your life?”
“I saved your life just now. I think we are even. But I am grateful that you brought me to the hospital.”
“But not grateful enough to let me go?” My wild laughter ebbed away, leaving me only profoundly tired.
“My gratitude is personal; my duty belongs to my sovereign.” Her words called up echoes of Gábor’s before we’d parted in Buda-Pest—the words of a person who placed honor before personal interest. I wished I had a fraction of that sureness. Emilija continued, “I am sorry. If I could see a way to let you go, I would.”
“You might pretend you never found me.”
She looked affronted. “I am not so incompetent.”
“What of my friend?” I asked, glancing at the lidérc.
Emilija looked at the sleeping woman, noting, surely, the uncanny angles of her cheeks, the goose feet just peeking below the blanket. “I have no quarrel with her. She is free to go.”
So Dragović’s daughter did not share her father’s zealous hatred of the praetheria? Interesting.