by Rosalyn Eves
Vasilisa frowned, and though she did not look at me, I suspected she was thinking of the spell that bound me. A sophisticated spell like that would take a great deal of power to maintain, meaning she might not have energy to both maintain my spell and cast another one. St. Cajetan, let it be so.
While the satyr worked, I slept some. (Noémi always complained about my ability to sleep nearly anywhere, but I suspect she was only jealous.) I woke to an argument. Pretending to sleep still, I listened.
“Are you not finished yet? The night is half gone—the girl will have escaped before we’re free.”
The satyr growled. “There is only one of me. If you want the rocks moved faster, help me.”
“I cannot spell the rocks to move without releasing the spell on the táltos.”
I knew it.
“The táltos is asleep. He won’t escape.”
“But asleep for how long? And a táltos can be nearly as dangerous sleeping as waking—it’s just as well this one doesn’t seem to know his own gifts.” Vasilisa sniffed. “I can promise you, we will make better use of his power than he does.”
Did I have other powers beyond the shifting and animal persuasion, beyond the strange dream-walking that I had just begun? Not for the first time, I wished I had let the Lady teach me. Instead, I had refused her, and she had died at Vasilisa’s hand. Too late now for recriminations.
“Here, he’s twitching,” the satyr said. “He’s waking up. I’ll take care of him.”
“No, wait—” Vasilisa began.
Footsteps sounded nearby, then a shadow fell across me, and pain exploded in my head. Darkness dropped like a curtain.
* * *
Light filtered red across my closed eyes. The whole world seemed to be bobbing up and down in time with the pulsing in my temples.
I blinked, squinting teary-eyed at the too-bright sun. Was I drunk? Why could I not remember—
Memory returned with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I was not drunk, merely recovering from a head injury. But the light…I blinked again, trying to clear my vision. Wind whipped past my cheeks.
I was out of the cave. Clothed—by whom? And moving.
What the devil?
Not simply moving—flying. Blue-and-green-hued mountains, their tips already kissed with snow, scrolled beneath me. Two feminine arms curled around my torso, and bits of bone-white hair tangled in my vision. Vasilisa.
I tore my gaze away from the mountains below and looked around. Zhivka and the samodiva queen had sprouted misty, filigreed things from their backs that must be wings, and Bahadır hung suspended between them in a kind of woven mesh. His eyes were closed, and I could not tell from this distance if he was sleeping, unconscious, praying, or merely sick from the airborne motion.
How had I never known that the samodiva could fly? Then again, in light of what Zhivka had concealed from me, flying seemed a mere trifle. As if she felt my eyes on her, Zhivka glanced over. I turned my gaze sharply forward, but not before registering the hurt in her face. Good.
We landed a short time later to eat, relieve ourselves, and allow the women some time to rest. Based on the mountainous country and the changing position of the sun, I deduced we were likely still in Austria and flying eastward.
Bahadır slumped on the ground, his face buried in his arms. I crawled toward him, my head still aching from the blow the satyr had given me. Vasilisa perched on a boulder nearby, watching us closely, her fingers working through snarls in her hair. I did not doubt that if I tried to run, her spell would trip me up.
“Bahadır? Are you all right?” I set one hand on his shoulder.
He flinched, then blinked up at me, releasing a long breath. “Mátyás. You’re awake. Allah’a şükür.” He ran his hands over his face. “I am all right. Flying does not agree with me, but I am not hurt.”
I sat beside him, wrapping my arms around my knees. “How did you get here? And where are the others?”
“I don’t know. Anna and the lidérc sought aid from the castle on the mountain. I stayed behind with the horses in case you got free and came looking for us. While they were gone, the praetheria surprised me. They left the satyr behind to wait for Anna.”
Damnation. I’d hoped Anna would have more sense than to try to save me.
“But why bring you with them? Why not simply knock you out, or…” I trailed off. Or kill you.
“He is your insurance,” Vasilisa said, though I had not asked her. “Like most of your kind, you are rotten with sentimentality. You let Anna kill you to break the Binding; you let yourself be captured so she could escape us just now. You will not let a friend die for you. So long as you do what we ask, your friend lives.”
“I won’t be used as hostage,” Bahadır said, his eyes stricken.
Vasilisa merely shrugged, indifferent.
“Don’t worry,” I said, low-voiced. “We won’t stay captive long enough for it to matter.”
Another thought occurred to me. “Where are the horses?”
“Back by the mountain, if they have not already run off.”
Bahadır’s horse had been one of many belonging to the betyárok, but Holdas—my white horse had been with me for many years. I would miss the brute.
* * *
For a full day, I watched the praetheria’s travel patterns, trying to gather enough information to plot our escape: our direction, periods of travel and rest, how closely we were guarded. We were clearly traveling eastward—as the day waned, the sun began to sink at our backs, sending light across the shrinking mountains. I thought I caught a glimpse of a faraway city as we descended to a meadow near some trees. Vienna? Hard to tell from this distance.
The women flew for an hour or so before stopping to rest, and they did not fly at night, when darkness made it difficult to see the landmarks that guided their flight. Though they were powerful, they were not invincible.
Our biggest challenge was opportunity: in addition to Vasilisa’s spell keeping me tethered, the three women kept us closely guarded. At each stop, one of them remained nearby, keeping watch over us and preventing any open conversation about escape.
When it was Zhivka’s turn, I met her tentative smile with a haughty look over her shoulder, as though I could not see her. It was unpardonably rude for a gentleman to cut a lady like that—but then, I had never been a particularly good gentleman, and she deserved it.
It fell to Bahadır to talk to her, to comment on the mild weather and the flight. It was Bahadır who made her smile, then laugh, and when he asked if she knew what our destination was, she did not stiffen as she might have if I had asked.
“I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. I can assure you that you will not be hurt; I would not have agreed to this else.” From the corner of my eye, I could see her watching me, and I caught the way she leaned toward me, her voice fierce and intent. “When we stopped in Vienna, my queen asked me to bring you to her. Please understand I never meant any harm.”
I understood that she had sold us out, that any friendship between us meant less to her than her loyalty to her mistress. But then I remembered the way Zhivka had brought me back to myself with a touch when my dragon shape overwhelmed me, the way she looked at me as though she saw Mátyás, and not simply táltos. She had flirted with me and mocked me and championed me, and in another world, one where we were not at war, and I had not seen her sisters kill grown men with their seductive glamour, I would have flirted back. I would have kissed her and brought her flowers, orange as her flaming hair.
But in this world, all I could feel was the bitter ache of loss—of our friendship, of anything else we might have been to each other.
“ ‘Understand’?” I said, meeting her eyes for the first time since she’d betrayed us. “Yes, I understand. But that does not mean I shall forget—or forgive.” I stood and walked away, as far as my invis
ible tether would stretch. (Which was only a matter of five paces, but it was the symbolism of the act that counted.)
Zhivka did not try to talk to me again after that.
The first night, Vasilisa put something in the tea they gave us at supper. I fell asleep watching Zhivka and her queen dancing around the small fire they’d kindled.
The next day brought us into Hungary: I knew at once that the glinting lake we skirted was Lake Fertő—I had flown across these fields and hamlets near daily when I had lived with János at Eszterháza. Vasilisa must have been certain of the spell trapping me, since she made no attempt to hide our direction.
When we stopped for lunch, I asked Bahadır, “What are the odds that Noémi is being held in the same place they are taking us?”
He swallowed a bite of bread and said, “If I were a betting man, I would say your odds are probably not good. Why should they make things so easy for you?”
“But someone there might know something.” I leaned close, lowering my voice so the samodiva queen, our current guard, could not easily overhear. “Perhaps we should not try to escape until we’ve seen the praetherian camp.”
“It will undoubtedly be harder to escape once we’ve reached the camp, or the praetheria would not be so eager to reach it.”
A bee buzzed nearby, brushing across the grasses in search of some late-blooming flower. I ripped a chunk of bread with my teeth, chewed grimly for a moment, and then said, “You’re insufferable when you’re right—you know that?”
Bahadır grinned at me, the scar on his cheek pulling tight. “But I am nearly always right.”
“Precisely.”
We flew into headwinds over some green farmland. The first gale nearly knocked us from the sky. Vasilisa dropped several feet at once, and I clamped my lips on a shout. In crow form, I’d be delighted by such winds, riding the currents with easy joy. But not like this, at the mercy of someone else’s dubious powers of flight.
A second powerful wind slammed into us, and Vasilisa’s grip loosened. I slipped only a foot or so before she secured her grip, but that instant was enough to convince me.
I would not let someone else determine my fate. We would escape, and then see about finding Noémi. We could track the praetheria, if we had to—but I’d be damned before I let myself be carried through the air longer than absolutely necessary.
As we flew, I considered and abandoned various options for escape. I could not shift my way out of the spell: even if I could shift myself to the smallest of molecules—smaller even than the threads of the spell—there was no guarantee I could find my way back to myself. The two of us were not physically strong enough to overpower the women, particularly when I was hampered by Vasilisa’s invisible net. And Vasilisa would not release the net—except if she were to use her magic against a greater threat.
I needed a diversion.
When I first became a bandit, I fought a powerful guta by calling a cloud of birds that drew the creature away and put out its eyes. And yet many of the birds had sacrificed themselves to my persuasion, and each death had pricked me.
Would I ask for that kind of sacrifice again, if needed? Simply because I could do something did not mean I should.
I was still puzzling over such thoughts when I fell asleep that night, and when I woke again, in the grey light that presaged dawn, an idea had crystallized in my head. I glanced around. The others still slept—all but Zhivka, who watched me with clouded eyes. When she saw me looking at her, she turned away.
Birds were just beginning to stir, a few high sweet calls in the darkness. I cast my inner sense out: a slight brush sent them soaring upward and away. I wanted the other praetheria to sleep as long as possible.
Sweat was beginning to bead on my forehead before I found what I was looking for: not because of warmth, as the day was cool, but because searching had taken longer than I anticipated.
I nudged Bahadır with my foot. When he did not stir, I nudged again, harder. His eyes flew open, and I set a finger to my lips, glancing quickly at Zhivka to ensure she was still looking away. She was.
Be ready, I mouthed, and Bahadır sat up.
With my táltos sense, I could feel the mass of creatures growing, responding to my call. It was a question only—a request, not a compulsion. Still, there were many that answered, swarming toward us in a mass.
The sound reached us first: a low humming. Within moments, it had escalated to a roar, a steady buzz that reverberated in my head, and then we were surrounded by a cloud of flying insects: wasps, bees, biting flies.
Zhivka heard them at last, too late. She sprang to her feet and shouted, but her words were swallowed in noise, as the insects descended on the praetheria.
With a shriek, the two sleeping praetheria woke and leapt up, swatting at the insects crawling over them.
The samodiva queen ignited, fire flaring around her. I flinched, feeling the hundreds of tiny sparks extinguished in her heat. Insects still buzzed around her, waiting for the fire to subside. Behind her, Zhivka tumbled to the ground, writhing under the biting onslaught. She did not ignite, as the samodiva queen had, but screamed once, a cry so full of anguish that I nearly sent the insects away. But Vasilisa had not released her spell yet, and so I steeled my heart, and we waited.
It was hard to see what Vasilisa was doing through the buzzing black cloud, but I could hear her swearing, a choice mixture of German and Russian. I tensed, preparing to shift. She would need a spell to drive the insects away—and as soon as she dropped the spell holding me, I meant to be ready.
A thunderclap shook the clearing, and Bahadır and I rocketed backward. Pain shocked through my body, sending white and black streaks across my vision. I clutched my head, and the buzzing stopped, thousands of tiny lives wiped out in an instant. And not just the insects: a few unwary birds passing overhead tumbled from the sky; a handful of squirrels caught in the radius of a spell dropped from their nests. The ground around us turned black, carpeted with insect shells.
Vasilisa’s spell net still held.
No.
She stalked toward us, her eyes blazing. The right side of her face was angry and red from a handful of bites and stings.
“Did you think you could escape so easily? That a little pain would distract me from the spell holding you? I am not so weak.” She surveyed us contemptuously, lips twisting. “I think you do not respect me enough.”
She flicked her fingers at us. Beside me, Bahadır groaned and wrapped his arms around his torso. A moment later, I was writhing beside him, fire burning along my skin, as dozens of tiny bites and stings—an echo of those I’d inflicted on Vasilisa—stitched themselves in our own flesh.
When I could breathe again, the samodiva queen stood beside Vasilisa. If Vasilisa had been angry, the queen was incandescent with rage, fire shimmering along her skin and hair. Her eyes were terrible: the dark iris swallowing up the white.
“They do not suffer enough,” she said, lifting her hand.
Vasilisa put forth her own hand. “It is enough—for now.”
“My sister is dead,” the queen snarled. “They must answer for that.”
Zhivka? I pushed myself to my feet, though my arms still burned and my head still rattled with the animals’ death throes. At the far side of the clearing, Zhivka lay still. A breath of wind lifted a fiery lock from her cheek.
Her face was swollen grotesquely, pink and almost unrecognizable.
“But they were only bites,” I said. “Stings. Painful but not deadly. She can’t be dead.” My arm and the side of my face throbbed. I stumbled toward Zhivka, trying to ignore the crunching beneath my feet, and dropped to my knees beside her. Memories flooded through me: of her leading us to a trap in the ice caves, yes, but so much more. Of sitting beside her on the puszta and watching the sun set. Of her banter with the other betyárok. Her fearlessness and laugh
ter as we rode to challenge some new carriage.
All that brightness, gone. Snuffed out.
My fault.
Bahadır’s voice was soft behind me. “Bee stings take some people so. I’ve seen it before.”
“But she was samodiva—” Shock sent my thoughts spinning helplessly. My stomach knotted. Zhivka could not be dead.
“All samodiva bear human blood,” the samodiva queen said, her voice ragged. “Our daughters are sired by human fathers.”
I wiped my hand across my face. My cheeks were wet, though I did not remember the tears starting.
“I say we kill them now. Life for life,” the queen said.
“We need the táltos,” Vasilisa said.
“Then let me kill the other.”
I turned from Zhivka’s body to face them. The samodiva queen was rigid in her anger, fire still curling about her in an unearthly halo. Vasilisa’s pale eyes were shadowed. “It was not Bahadır’s fault. It was mine.”
“Life for life, death for death,” the queen insisted.
“Then take my life,” I said, holding my hands toward her. Exhaustion washed over me. I was so tired—tired of trying to do the right thing and hurting people instead. Tired of carrying the weight of being táltos everywhere like invisible shackles. Tired of expectations I could not meet.
My life was only borrowed anyway. The Lady should never have brought me back.
There was a long, tense moment as the samodiva queen glowered at us both, her hands lifted as though ready to strike. I braced myself. Fire was not high on my list of ways to die.
Here lies Eszterházy Mátyás: Like the damned, he burned.
“We don’t have time for this,” Vasilisa said. “Your sister’s death will be answered, but not now, not in this fashion. Do what you must for her funeral rites, but then we should be on our way.”