by Rosalyn Eves
“And you did not think imminent doom was a useful method to focus,” I murmured.
Hadúr merely leveled a look at me, one that would have made the strictest of my schoolmasters writhe in envy.
I stopped talking and tried to focus. I was not the scatterbrain Noémi sometimes accused me of being, but holding a singular focus for so long was difficult. My thoughts began to drift: to my already-rumbling stomach, to the warm sun on my skin, to the air currents where a pair of crows tumbled just beyond the World Tree. I wanted to escape with my body in crow form, not sit here trying to leave my body behind.
“Focus,” Hadúr said again.
I tried. One moment, I was watching the leaves flutter, dark against light, and breathing in time to Hadúr’s low counts. Then my focus changed, as when you absently look at an object and your eyesight blurs. Only instead of blurring, everything seemed sharper.
I could see my body as well as the tree above me, a curious mystery of double vision that I solved when I realized I was no longer in my body. My spirit self looked at the ground below me, and in the next instant I found myself hovering over it. I turned slowly, the plains sweeping before me in a broad, seemingly endless steppe. I focused on a tree near the horizon—and at once I was moving toward it, soaring across the grasses with an effortlessness I had not known, even in bird form.
It was like riding the thermals as a crow, only unburdened by the limits of a physical body. It was exhilarating. I could see why Hadúr said some táltos forgot to return to themselves—but I was in no danger yet.
I skimmed past the tree, moving faster, until I could see the distant dark smudge of the Bükk Mountains. I thought of the trajectory Bahadır and I had taken with the praetheria, flying in a relatively straight line from the ice cave toward the Hungarian plains, where Hadúr had found us. If the trajectory continued true, Noémi might be somewhere in the Bükk or Mátra Mountains, or beyond that, hidden in the Carpathians. She might even be in Russia, but I hoped she was nearer to hand than that.
It couldn’t hurt to search, only for a moment. I sent my spirit soaring northward to the mountains, skimming above the tree line. Viewing the world through my spirit eyes, I discovered that living things gave off a small soul spark, with humans brighter than most. When I encountered such sparks, I slowed and circled closer to the earth. Mostly, I found people clustered around farms and hamlets, and none of them were my sister. Trying to find my sister’s soul spark among so many was a fool’s errand.
When I reached the mountains, I turned reluctantly back toward the World Tree. The return was faster, my body calling to my soul like a beacon. Reaching the tree, I found the branches lit with a handful of flares: the grey ladies, and brighter than all of them, Hadúr.
Did all praetheria shine so brightly? I didn’t know, but I determined to find out. If it were true, then I didn’t need to find Noémi, one human soul among hundreds of thousands. I could begin by finding the brilliant lights of the praetheria—and my sister with them.
I settled my spirit back in my body and woke with a shocked gasp, as though I’d been plunged in icy water.
I had been plunged in icy water: I was dripping, and there was an empty bucket in Bahadır’s hands. He smiled and shrugged.
Hadúr said only, “You were gone longer than is safe for a new walker. Next time, curb your curiosity.”
I wiped my wet face with my shirtsleeve (only slightly less wet), and Bahadır helped me stand.
“Are you all right? There’s a curious expression on your face.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
I was more than fine. I knew how to find Noémi.
Noémi dimmed the light hanging in the small chamber, and I crawled into the bed facing hers. Despite the exhaustion that hung off me, I was not tired.
Noémi was here. She wasn’t lost to us any longer. We might both be captive, but her presence felt like a small miracle.
“You were right,” I told her. “Mátyás is not dead. Or rather, he did die—but he came back.”
There was a rustle in the dimness as Noémi sat up, reaching across the space between our beds to grasp my hand. “You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. I only found him a few weeks ago, but we were searching for you together.”
“Why did he never try to find us?”
“I think he believed he would endanger both of us if he did. Instead, he took up with the betyárok on the puszta. They called him the King of Crows, and I heard of him even in Vienna.”
Noémi let out a gurgle that was half laugh, half sob, and pulled her hand back. “Of course he did.” Then she sighed. “He still should have found us. He could not have put us in greater danger than we managed for ourselves.”
I smiled ruefully at the darkness, thinking of my own flight from Vienna. “I should like to hear your story.”
“I’ll tell you soon. Where is Mátyás now?”
“I don’t know. He might be here. We were looking for you when we were trapped by praetheria. He helped me escape, but he was gone before I could come back to help him.”
Noémi sighed. “I hope he is far from here. This is not a place for humans.”
She sounded so certain. What had she seen in these caves? In the dark, I could sense the presence of hundreds of tons of rocks—an entire mountain above me. The air smelled of water and stone and dust. As I thought about the pressure of so much rock, my breath grew thin and labored, and I shoved the thought away.
“And you…Are you all right? They have not hurt you?”
Her pillow rustled as she shook her head. “I am not hurt. The praetheria have not been unkind. But it is lonely here, and sometimes I…hear things. The praetheria are preparing for war.”
“I know.” But what was there that I, or Noémi, could do about it? I had already done what little I could—and might as well have done nothing. “We cannot stay here.”
Noémi didn’t answer.
I propped myself up on one elbow to look across the room at her. Only a little bit of light reached us, from a guard’s lantern some distance down the connecting corridor. She lay flat on her back, her eyes staring at the ceiling.
“Noémi? Is escape so difficult?”
“I tried once or twice when I was first captured, but the spell they put on me never let me go far without doubling over in pain. And then I began to feel somehow that I should stay. That I needed to stay. It was that same sureness that led us through the labyrinths in Buda Castle when we rescued Gábor and William; the same sureness that made me believe Mátyás was alive.”
I hesitated for a breath. She would not like what I had to tell her. “Are you certain you do not stay because you find Hunger attractive?” I had seen her blush earlier, and I knew how she had looked at Hunger before she disappeared.
“No!” Her voice sliced through the air between us, chilly and sure. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. But now was not the time to pursue that. There were other truths that needed telling.
I told her about William’s death and then crowded into her bed to hold her while she cried. William had been my friend, and I missed him, but Noémi had loved him, before it became clear that revolution would always be his first love. Perhaps she loved him still.
When she quieted, sobs lingering only as a hiccup in her breathing, I told her about saving Franz Joseph from the spell and the trade his mother had made. In turn, she told me how she had come to the caves.
She had left Vienna to find Mátyás, in the company of Hunger, believing it to be safer than traveling alone.
“Noémi,” I sighed, wishing she had trusted me more. I knew why she had not—she believed I had lied to her about Mátyás’s death. But she had taken such a risk. “Your reputation…”
“What did it matter? Better a ruined reputation than being forced into marriage with the duke of Rohan if I
stayed.” She reached over to poke me. “And you are a fine one to talk. You also showed up here alone, in the company of strange men.”
I blushed in the darkness, wondering if my mother would be pleased or horrified to know that the propriety she had tried so hard to instill in me haunted me yet. “You’re right. It was a silly thing to say. But you might have told me about the duke.”
“You were too busy trying to save the world.”
“I was wrong,” I said flatly. “The world does not need my saving. I should have been there for you.”
“You’re here now,” Noémi said, leaning her head against my shoulder, a tacit gesture of forgiveness. She resumed her story, telling me how in a field outside the city, Hunger had shifted to his dragon form and flown her to the puszta. For two days, they had searched the plains for a scene that matched the ones she carried from her dreams, with no success. On the third day, Hunger had told her he was needed in Vienna. But instead of leaving her to search for Mátyás alone, as she asked, he had carried her back to a praetherian camp outside Vienna, where he had left her.
“If Mátyás is alive, he will find you,” Hunger had promised, and then he had disappeared, and she had not seen him again until a midnight dance some weeks later.
“You were there too,” Noémi said, her voice rumbling against my side. “I would swear it was you, though the spell they kept on me would not let me reach you.”
And I remembered how I had seen a golden-haired woman my first night in the praetherian camp, after the archduchess had issued her order for my death and Hunger had saved me. Had I not been so shocked by the disintegration of my entire life, I might have recognized Noémi and saved myself months of searching.
Though perhaps, if I had known I was leaving her behind in the camp, I might never have found the courage to escape. You cannot change the past, I reminded myself, only face the future. Whatever choices I had made, I was here now.
When Noémi spoke again, her voice was heavy with sleep. “I lied earlier when I said I wished you were not here. I’m glad you’re here, Anna. It’s been so lonely. I was beginning to fear I had lost myself. I do not entirely know who or what I am anymore. But now that you’re here, perhaps I shall find myself again.”
“Perhaps,” I said, very gently, because I did not know how to tell Noémi I was as lost as she was. I had been so certain, going into the Binding spell. I had been chimera, a spell breaker, and though I had been afraid, I had carried with me a sure sense of self. And then the Austrian court had ignored me, the Congress had laughed at me, and the praetheria had betrayed me. I had gone from being a heroine—fêted, loved, respected—to an outcast. Where in all of that was I? Who was I, stripped of all my roles, of all outside opinions? Who was I, alone in the dark, when no one else could see me?
I didn’t know.
But I lay beside Noémi, one arm protectively around my cousin, my heart’s sister, and listened to her breaths as she slept, until I also fell asleep.
* * *
Things did not feel quite so dire when I awoke, though it was odd to wake into the same darkness that I had fallen asleep in. The caves never altered as the world outside did, with the waning and waxing of light marking the passage of days. Someone brought us bread and fresh apples, and then Noémi showed me about the caverns.
“The entrance is spelled to prevent our leaving,” she said, “but so long as we do not disturb the praetheria, we are free to wander. I spend most of my days wandering. I offered to help their healers when I first came, but when they did not acknowledge my offer, I stopped asking. I fill the time as best I can, but the days are sometimes slow.”
I studied the caves as we walked, looking for potential opportunities to escape. There were armed praetheria everywhere, particularly as we neared the entrance, and though the praetheria in most of the caverns ignored us, I could tell when we drew close to dangerous territory, because all the praetheria stopped their activities to watch us. At night, guards were posted outside our room, and it was not as though we could tunnel through solid rock, even if we knew in which direction to do so. Being underground distorted any natural sense I had for direction.
The second night, I wrote to Gábor, detailed notes about the caves and the number of praetheria and any training I had glimpsed. I was not certain such details would accomplish anything for him in the war, but I felt better for doing something. Perhaps, by some miracle, he and his troops might find us. When I finished, I whispered, “Változz át üres lappá!” and those damning details I’d written disappeared.
I reread his last letter, another funny observation about one of his fellow soldiers, who could not fall asleep without a complicated ritual that included loudly declaiming poetry. Even though we are at war, there are hours entire when I forget: when we ride through the countryside and the sky overhead is so blue that it hurts, or the shadows in a grove of trees remind me of a fairy story. Though I am glad you are not here for the drudgery and the dangerous parts, I wish I could share all the beautiful parts with you. And I think, somehow, that even the drudgery would be transformed, were you here.
It might be the prettiest compliment he had paid me. I read it again, running my fingers along the line. I wanted to save the words, but it was too dangerous—if someone found the letters and realized what they were, I might lose them. Worse, they might pose a threat to Gábor. I read the letter a final time, then whispered the charm to obliterate it.
In the morning, Noémi and I resumed our explorations. The caves extended for miles, well past the rooms settled by the praetheria, though guards prevented us from venturing into the unexplored depths. The caves had their own austere beauty: gold and russet icicles of stone hanging from the ceilings, towers of stone thrusting up from the ground. One of the caverns even held a small lake, where praetheria could occasionally be seen rowing a small boat.
I knelt at the water’s edge. Fairy lights lined the walls of the cavern and reflected off the black surface, but beyond the occasional ripple, the lake revealed nothing.
I trailed my fingers in the cool liquid, and Noémi yanked me back, her face pale. “Don’t touch the water. There is something that lives here—I don’t know what. It doesn’t seem to disturb the praetheria, but Hunger warned me that it might not be so kind to humans.”
Remembering the creature who had nearly buried me underground in Prater Park, I shivered. I dried my fingers on my skirts, and we went back to the main chamber.
Whispers stirred through the crowd gathering there: someone was coming. New praetheria arrived several times a day and seldom engendered so much interest. Who could it be? We had not seen Hunger since my arrival—perhaps he had returned from whatever business had taken him away.
A woman crowned with fiery Titian hair emerged from the antechamber, flanked by a pair of praetherian guards. My uncle Pál scrambled in her wake. The samodiva queen.
I scanned the darkness around her, looking for the company I had last seen her with: Vasilisa, Zhivka, Mátyás. But no one else followed her.
My heart began to hammer. I grabbed Noémi’s arm. “She’s alone,” I said. “Perhaps Mátyás escaped.”
“Or perhaps he’s being held elsewhere. Or he did not survive your rockslide. It would not be the first time you have killed my brother.”
I cast her a sidelong glance, unable to read her tone. Was this some black humor? Or had she still not entirely forgiven me?
She went on, “That woman is one of the Four. She is more powerful than she looks, and commands near absolute loyalty here.”
I looked at the samodiva queen again. One of the Four. I ticked them off on my fingers: Vasilisa, Hunger, the four-headed Count Svarog in the tsar’s court, and now the samodiva. I knew who they all were now—perhaps Gábor and the Hungarian soldiers could use that knowledge.
Hunger fought free of the crowd to stand by the samodiva queen. He bent his
dark head to hers, her red-gold hair a brilliant contrast to his. Pál inched nearer to them, as though he would make himself part of their conversation. Why was he here? What did he hope to gain from his alliance with the praetheria? If they won, they’d have little use for humans to help them rule. I glanced at Noémi, but she was not looking at Hunger. I could not tell if she was deliberately ignoring him or if she had not yet seen him. Her eyesight was still uncertain, and the dimness of the caves could not help.
Before we could approach them, the queen swept away, trailed by the two guards and Pál. Hunger caught sight of us and joined us, a slight smile on his lips. His golden eyes were unreadable.
“What news does the queen bring?” I asked.
“Some that would please you, some that would not.” The smile broadened.
I pressed my lips together in vexation. Hunger still spoke in riddles.
“He won’t tell you,” Noémi said, her fingers tightening around my forearm. “Won’t or can’t, I’m not certain.”
“Then tell me this: is Mátyás well?”
“Your cousin is alive.”
Noémi’s grip on my arm eased.
“Where is he?” I asked.
But Hunger only shook his head, a light glinting in his eyes that might have been amusement. “A word of warning before I go. The samodiva Zhivka died on her return to these caves, and her queen blames Mátyás. She was not granted retribution, and so she might seek vengeance against one or both of you. She has only just returned from other business, else I would have spoken sooner. I have told her she is not to touch you, but be wary.”
He bowed again and then disappeared.
Zhivka was dead?
I had known Zhivka for only a few weeks, but I had liked her—liked her subtle wit and her bright smile. Even when she had betrayed us, I had not stopped liking her. She had put family above friends, but I found I could not fault her for that. Had not Mátyás and I done the same, when we went searching for Noémi instead of trying to fight a war?