Winter War Awakening (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 3)

by Rosalyn Eves

  My skin stung with the remembered pain of those same stars.

  Vasilisa flung herself up into the air. “Fine,” she said, her breath coming heavy. “I yield. You can have the táltos. For now.” She turned midair to face the tree where I was hiding. “Táltos, we hold your sister. Train with Hadúr, if you must. When you’ve finished, you’ll come to us willingly enough, for your sister’s sake.”

  She vanished in a puff of smoke.

  Damn it. I knew it. I launched myself toward the spot where she’d disappeared, banking as I realized I had no idea where she’d gone and that I had just resolved to fight smarter.

  I fluttered down to the meadow grass, shifting as I landed. Bahadır emerged from the trees to stand beside me.

  Hadúr walked toward us, squinting at me. “The Four have your sister?”

  I nodded.

  “We’ll find her.” His eyes flickered to Bahadır. “Who is this?”

  “My friend, Bahadır.” I continued the introduction. “Bahadır, this is Hadúr, the Hungarian god of war.”

  Bahadır’s eyes went a little wide, but he gave no other sign of awe. He bowed, briefly, then straightened.

  “You look like a soldier,” Hadúr said. “Come with your friend. We’ll need good soldiers in this war.”

  “I’d be honored,” Bahadır said. “My father was a soldier. He trained me some before his death.”

  “Good man.” Hadúr looked back at me. “Find something to cover yourself with, táltos.”

  But as it transpired, clothes were not easy to come by in such an uninhabited region. In the end, I flew overhead in crow form while Bahadır rode the second horse Hadúr had brought with him. He had, it seems, been looking for me.

  * * *

  Riding was not as swift as flying, and I found myself circling back frequently, so as to not outpace the riders. But by nightfall, we had drawn within view of the World Tree, its immense height shooting from the plains like a fountain.

  “What is this place?” Bahadır asked as we approached the base of the tree, the horned skull still untouched beneath the trunk. Despite its height, the tree cast no shadow—part of the magic that kept the tree hidden, I suspected.

  “The tree has many names: the World Tree, the Sky-High Tree, the Tree Without a Top, the Tree of Life. Any of them will do. The tree is hidden from most humans, for their protection as much as ours. But you are my guest, so the tree is not hidden from you.”

  Hadúr hesitated, then said, “The way up is not easy; many have found their hearts fail them at such heights. How is your courage?”

  “As sound as anyone’s,” Bahadır said, though he gasped a little as Hadúr’s massive arms gripped him and they launched upward. Hadúr did not fly, precisely, but his leap reached heights that no mortal could. He caught the lowest limb of the tree and swung up.

  I flew after them, landing near the door of my old room in a hollow in the tree trunk. Hadúr set Bahadır down and told us to make ourselves comfortable while he returned to his forge. The grey ladies I remembered from my previous stay showed up sometime later, though they were not so animated as they had been before.

  I imagined they still grieved the loss of the Lady.

  * * *

  It was not quite dawn when Hadúr appeared outside our room. His heavy knock pulled us both from our dreams.

  “I have been thinking of your sister,” Hadúr said as Bahadır and I emerged, blinking and dry-mouthed, from our beds. He bore a great bird on either shoulder, golden falcons with black wing bands, nearly twice the size of a peregrine. But the falcons were unlike any other bird I’d encountered, and their minds were closed to me. The Lady’s turul birds. Above us, the shifting branches of the tree revealed tumbling stars in the night sky, but far below, above the puszta grasses, the air was still grey, barely lit by a sun that had not yet breached the horizon.

  “What?” I asked, my wits still shrouded in a fog of sleep.

  Hadúr’s face loomed grim before me: his nose a trifle crooked where it had been broken, his dark eyes narrowed beneath heavy brows, a faint scar seaming one corner of his lips. A face that had seen more wars than I could dream of. For the first time, I wondered what it was like to live in the World Tree after the Binding. In the stories, the Upper Realm teemed with gods and other beings. Most of them had died or faded in the Binding, and now it was only Hadúr and a handful of grey ladies and birds rattling around a once-vibrant realm. I peered at him more closely, but he did not seem lonely—though truthfully, I could not read much in his expression beyond irritability at my dimness.

  “Now that the war has begun, we haven’t much time for your training, and I cannot afford to have you distracted by the search for your sister. My sources tell me that the Four are somewhere to the north of us, in the mountains. You may use the Lady’s birds to search for her.”

  “I’ve sent crows to look for Noémi. None of them have found her.”

  Hadúr tipped his head to one side. “Crows are very intelligent, but they do not have the same capacity as the turul birds, who bear magic in their blood.”

  Was that why I’d never had much success touching their minds? “But how will they know what to look for? They’re not receptive to my particular gifts.”

  The corners of his lips curled. “You’re a shifter. Show them.”

  Oh. Right. Taking on a woman’s form wasn’t totally new to me, but something about taking on my sister’s form smacked of indecency. Concentrating, I shifted my head and face to mimic Noémi’s, and then adopted a generic female body, approximately Noémi’s height. It would have to do. There was no way in heaven or hell that I was going to think that closely about her body. My own clothes hung loose about her smaller frame.

  Once the birds had taken a good look and flown away, I shifted back, mildly surprised to find that I was sweating.

  “Your sister is very beautiful,” Bahadır observed.

  “Shut up,” I said, by way of thanks.

  Hadúr ignored our exchange and led us to one of the broad branches of the World Tree, where I had rebuilt my endurance following my death and rebirth by treading up and down.

  Hadúr began slowly, testing the limits of what I already knew, starting with shifting into small, familiar shapes: my crow, a rabbit. The forms grew increasingly complex: a boar, a horse, a man. My human shiftings were not exact, as they depended on my memory, but the more familiar the face, the more successfully I could imitate someone else. Hadúr asked for someone both Bahadır and I knew, to test the likeness.

  I picked instinctively, settling into the frame of one of my favorite bandits, who had been killed last summer. But when I spoke, it was with Ákos’s voice, and my stomach curled in on itself, as though I’d just raised a corpse. This was a mistake. Beside me, Bahadır shook silently.

  “Enough,” I said, shifting into my own body again and fighting the urge to retch. “I need a break. And some food.”

  “Rest is a luxury you will not always have on the battlefield,” Hadúr said, but he allowed me to collapse beside Bahadır.

  Hadúr snapped his fingers and the grey ladies materialized, bearing trays of steaming pastries.

  “Mátyás,” Bahadır began, then choked.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Ákos had been Bahadır’s closest friend; it was unforgiveable of me to spring his friend’s specter on him like that.

  Following our break, Hadúr ran me through more permutations of shapes, focusing on those not found in this world: a hound with wings, a bear with impervious dragon scales beneath the fur.

  The seven-headed dragon hovered at the edges of my thoughts, whispering in my ears, calling to my heart. No matter what grunting approval Hadúr gave my forms, they all felt a fraction off, because they were not the form that truly wanted me. Or that I truly wanted.

  “Good,” Hadúr said as I melted
from the bear into a horse with clawed feet. “Again. Faster.”

  “I can’t.” Even after my death, there were limits to my shifting. The more fanciful the form, the more energy it took to hold it. Except the dragon. That form, alone of all my shapes, energized me. And that form, alone of all my shapes, terrified me.

  If Hadúr was disappointed by my human weaknesses, he didn’t let on. “Very well. Let’s talk of military strategy instead.”

  I tried to suppress a grimace at the suggestion—strategy generally bored me witless—but did not entirely succeed, judging by Hadúr’s raised eyebrow. Time to deflect. “Can you tell me of a táltos’s other gifts? I know shifting and some animal persuasion, but Vasilisa said something about a táltos being as dangerous sleeping as awake.”

  “She meant dream-walking, most like, where a táltos sends their spirit free of their body during a trance. But you’re not ready for that just yet.”

  Dream-walking. I thought of the times I’d seen Noémi in my dreams and the vision I’d had of the soldiers who attacked my betyárok the night before their ambush. These had not been dreams of foresight, the way a Coremancer might dream. These had been real visions, the product of my wandering spirit. I shivered, not entirely easy with the idea that my body and soul could split apart without my conscious will. What would happen if my spirit wandered away and did not come back?

  Hadúr had already moved on, summoning the grey ladies again, who produced a set of tin soldiers, half in red uniforms, half in blue, and a table with a contoured surface. Hadúr gave us a short lecture on strategy, most of which I struggled to follow, and then set the red soldiers atop a ridge. “Your soldiers”—he nodded to me—“occupy the high ground.” He handed the other soldiers to Bahadır. “How would you proceed?”

  Bahadır frowned at the arrangement, then set a small contingent of soldiers before the hill. The others he set some distance away.

  “The soldiers will move as you direct them,” Hadúr said.

  I sent my soldiers down the hill to surround Bahadır’s small troop—only to find his other soldiers closing in from both sides.

  Hadúr shook his head. “Did you listen to nothing I said? You just fell victim to a classic trap—do not cede the high ground if you do not have to, no matter how easy the victory seems.” He waved a hand at me, and a rush of wind knocked me and my soldiers down. “Now you’re dead.”

  “But that’s just a standard battle between ordinary soldiers,” I protested. “Add Luminate magicians, and things would not be so simple.”

  “All right. Show me.”

  I tried again, this time describing magicians who would generate a wall of fire around the soldiers on the hilltop, protecting them from enemy charges, while bombarding the enemy soldiers with cannonballs and Lucifera ground quakes.

  “Not bad,” Hadúr said.

  Bahadır looked thoughtful for a moment, then grinned as he described his retaliation: Elementalist winds circling to slow the cannons and knock their trajectory awry, while also stoking the fire and shrinking it back toward the soldiers it was meant to protect. He paired these spells with Coremancer Persuasion to set my troops panicking within their fire trap and trampling each other.

  Hadúr surveyed my soldiers (was it just an effect of the late-afternoon light or were a few of them smoking?) and then laughed. “I think you are dead again, táltos.” He clapped Bahadır on the shoulder. “Well done.”

  I rubbed my temples, which were beginning to ache from the unaccustomed focus. “I think the solution is clear: let Bahadır plan all my battles for me.”

  “A military leader needs excellent commanders, but you cannot rely on others in battle. Lines of communication are too easily cut, men are too easily killed. It’s not enough to be gifted: you must understand what you do.”

  I glanced beyond the tree branch to the stars spinning in the dark sky that always surrounded the upper branches of the tree. They winked at me, cold and distant. So much seemed to ride on this training: as táltos, I was expected to be a hero, a leader of men. But I was still only Mátyás, whatever my gifts, and I did not know how to be either.

  My father had died at his own hand after a loss at cards, disappointing everyone who loved him. I had agreed to die at Anna’s hands once to escape that crushing failure, and yet here I was again, trying to exorcise my father’s ghost. If I failed now, how wide would those ripples of disappointment reach?

  I had promised myself I would stay and let Hadúr train me. It was the smartest thing I could do, under the circumstances. But already I was conscious of an itch, a need to move, to find Noémi, to do anything that might preclude fully becoming the táltos Hadúr expected of me.

  * * *

  Our days settled into a kind of routine after that: mornings were spent testing, and then stretching, my táltos gifts. Through some experimentation, we discovered that my range for shifting inanimate objects was about thirty paces. Animate objects were harder. I could shift a rabbit at fifteen paces—but nothing approaching the distance at which I had shifted Anna in the ice caves. It seemed my control was greater when real consequences hung on my actions: imminent doom helped me focus.

  But when I said as much to Hadúr, he shook his head. “You are not yet ready to try your skills in battle, if that is what you are hinting at. The threat of destruction may help you focus, but it lacks something as a life strategy.”

  Bahadır laughed, and I mock-glowered at him, which only made him laugh harder.

  Afternoons, supposedly to offer me some “rest” from shifting, were spent learning and applying military strategy. Personally, I found the afternoons harder, particularly since Bahadır generally ran circles around my strategies. I can handle humiliation as well as the next man (which is to say, not as well as I’d like)—but I began to suspect Hadúr enjoyed watching my constant defeats.

  Some days Hadúr would bring us news of the war, though as I never saw messengers approaching or leaving the tree, I am not sure how he received word. Perhaps the wind carried it to him—I would not put it past either Hadúr or the wind, which had a curious, almost sentient quality as it passed through the World Tree.

  He demonstrated the troop movements on a map with animated soldiers. An Austrian general with the yellow-and-black flag of the empire settled into northeastern Hungary, near some of the country’s richest mines. Another yellow-and-black army, under General Windisch-Graetz, marched eastward from Vienna, clashing with Hungarian troops only a few hours from Eszterháza.

  Dragović laid siege to Buda-Pest. Even with my limited strategic training, I could see these armies closing like a noose around the heart of the country. I remembered how easily Bahadır’s toy armies had surrounded and destroyed my own, and I frowned at the map.

  The itch was back: it did not seem right to hide in a tree in the midst of peaceful plains while my sister remained missing, while other red-blooded Hungarians fought and died. But I pushed it aside and attended as well as I could to Hadúr. There were still things I needed to learn.

  Nearly a fortnight into my training, after exhausting the limits of both my shifting and my animal persuasion, Hadúr finally moved on to dream-walking, a gift I had never manifested before my death. And since dying, I had manifested it only accidentally.

  “Dream-walking,” Hadúr said, “is one of the oldest known táltos gifts. Dream walkers used their skill to explore enemy battlefields, to retrieve secrets, to find lost things. The best dream walkers could use their spirit selves to leave this plane: some could inhabit the dreams of others, persuading their sleeping selves; others could visit the realm of the dead.”

  St. Cajetan, save me. “I do not,” I said, “intend to visit the damned.” Or the saved, for that matter. I imagined they’d be even less welcoming.

  Hadúr ignored me. “For this gift to be useful to you, you must exercise conscious control. The first step is to
put yourself into a trance.”

  I must have looked alarmed, because Bahadır said, “Don’t worry. I will ensure that no one disturbs your body. No one will shave your head or mustache while you sleep, or paint flowers on your cheeks.”

  I hadn’t imagined any of those possibilities until he spoke. Now I did. “That’s very reassuring. Thank you.”

  Bahadır laughed, and Hadúr sighed. I suppose to someone who had seen millennia, we must have appeared to have the attention span of mayflies.

  “A waking trance is not the same as sleeping, though it may look like it to the outside observer. In a trance state, your mind is actually more focused and alert than it is in your typical wakeful state.”

  “I’m a champion sleeper,” I said. “But I know nothing about trances.” I was not certain I wanted to. Setting aside my new fear that Bahadır might well shave me while I was entranced, consciously leaving my body to wander where I willed seemed, frankly, dangerous—even mad. But my old nurse would have said, If it’s a goose, it should be fat. If I was going to train, I might as well do it all.

  “Find a focal point,” Hadúr said, and I fixed my eyes on a nearby branch of the World Tree that was rustling gently. “Focus all your attention on that point. Think of nothing but that point. Become that point.”

  Some demon inside me prompted me to start shifting, sprouting leaves from my fingertips.

  “No!” Hadúr roared. “I do not mean literally become that point. Only direct your thoughts to it.”

  “Oh,” I said meekly. “You might have said as much.”

  Bahadır smothered a laugh.

  “Now focus. Breathe deeply, in and out. Relax your muscles. Calm your mind and hold your focus on that point until everything else recedes. When you engage the trance, explore the surrounding puszta, but do not go too far. Dream-walking can be intoxicating, and táltos who have left their bodies for too long have been known to die.”