by Rosalyn Eves
He shook his head again. “They haven’t the strength for that. Not when the Russians are—” He cut off, perhaps realizing he had said too much.
“The Russian tsar is under the thrall of a praetherian lord,” the lidérc said. “If you think they will spare your army, you are mistaken.”
“What would you have me do?” he asked, his voice filled with the plaintive cadence of a young man who has had too much laid upon him, too soon.
“Your Majesty?” one of his attendants called, nervous.
Franz Joseph held up his hand. “A moment more.”
“Stop this war. Call off Haynau. Tell your other generals to withdraw. Revoke the Congress’s decision to sequester the praetheria and call for a new Congress,” I said.
“I can’t do that.”
“You’re the emperor,” I said. “It’s not a question of ability, only will.”
“Very well, then. I won’t do that.”
Despair washed over me. Until that moment, I had not realized how much I had counted on Franz Joseph saying yes.
The lidérc said, her voice soft and laced with iron, “Then you will lose this war.”
Franz Joseph ignored her. To me he said, “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe for a woman. I can give you safe passage back to our camp, and we can make arrangements for you to return to Vienna.”
Abruptly, I missed Gábor, who would never patronize me so. “It’s not safe for anyone,” I said. “And I will not be coming with you.”
The emperor’s men called again, and with a tightening of his lips, as though he wished to say more but refrained, Franz Joseph turned and remounted his horse. I wished I had the words to make him listen: it was not the Austrians alone who would lose this war—we all stood to lose, human and praetherian alike.
Awareness returned in fits and starts: a scrap of color here, a shadow there.
I scrambled to collect the bits, to fit them into a pattern that might tell me where I was and how I came to be there.
An impression of heaviness, an inability to move my body.
Am I drunk? The patchy memory fit, as did the feeling of heaviness. But I did not remember drinking, only swirling through a dream, and then shifting (twice?) to a crow.
I made a point not to drink and fly—that never ended well.
I was missing something. I closed my eyes, struggling to capture the elusive thread, though my current location was completely dark.
Memory slammed into me, and my eyes flew open again. I’d helped Anna and Noémi escape, and something had gone wrong.
Vasilisa…a net.
And then I’d lost the shifting, lost Anna and Noémi. Again.
But where was I now? I could see nothing with my spirit eyes, only an endless blankness. Without a body, I could not feel anything tangible. I cast my inner sense out, hunting for some sign of life. I found bats clustered, not far distant, sleeping upside down.
Sleeping in a cave.
My proximity to the bats suggested I was also in the cave—probably the same one where I’d found Anna. Was I suspended in the rock walls? That would explain the blankness.
I’d passed through rock before in spirit form, though I didn’t care for the sensation of my soul stuff separating to find minuscule gaps in the rock. But now, no amount of straining would let me ease through—when I reached too far, my entire spirit caught fire with pain.
The rock I could not see (or, technically, touch) pressed in on me, smothering me until I could not seem to draw enough air—a ridiculous sensation, given that my spirit had no lungs to speak of. But the feeling of being buried persisted, growing heavier and more insidious with each moment that passed.
Hadúr had not said much about what happened to spirit walkers who did not return to their bodies, but I did not imagine it could be good. If nothing else, without awareness, I’d have limited access to food. My body would waste away, my muscles atrophy.
If I could not find a way to escape, my body would die.
I didn’t know what would happen to my spirit then, but I did not want to find out.
Following our failed conference with Franz Joseph, the lidérc and I took a circuitous route back to camp to avoid the Austrian soldiers covering the roads. I listened for the sounds of battle as we approached the camp, but there was nothing. Only the wind whispering in the trees, the call of an owl somewhere in the distance.
We looked at each other and urged our horses faster through the fields.
There was no movement in the rearward camp. But there were bodies everywhere, tumbled across the blood-iced grass like detritus left in the wake of a massive storm. Haynau’s army had reached Klapka’s troops and mowed over them. These dead had been surprised in their bedrolls, slaughtered while dreaming. Where were the sentries who should have given warning of the army’s approach? Bribed to silence—or dead, most likely.
The metallic tang of blood and frost was heavy in the air; I fought a rising gorge. If we had turned back when we first encountered the soldiers instead of pressing on to talk—fruitlessly—to Franz Joseph, could we have prevented this? Saved anything?
The lidérc must have read my misgivings in my face, because she brought her horse close to mine and touched my hand. “If we had tried to give warning, they might have killed us too.”
“Might” was small comfort to the dead.
The wind carried the sound of fighting to us now: the dull roar of cannon fire, the rattle of bullets.
Oh, God, I thought. Mátyás.
The cart that carried him was slow, following at the rear of Guyon’s troops, somewhere in the middle of the combined armies. Every night had found us at the fringes of the camp. How long would it take the Austrians to reach him? To reach Noémi?
I spurred my horse forward, and the lidérc followed. The Austrian army stood between us and the Hungarian soldiers, and we could not ride straight through them, much as I wished to. Instead, we skirted the field of dead, trying to keep our distance from the worst of the fighting. But we could not entirely avoid pockets of violence. The lidérc’s glamour still held, keeping the soldiers from challenging us, but twice she was forced to use her light-lure to draw soldiers out of our path, and once I broke the spell on a fireball headed toward Hungarian soldiers. I was too slow to catch the released magic, though, and the fireball fell apart in a rain of sparks that hissed when they hit the frozen ground.
We reached Guyon’s camp just before dawn, light staining the dark sky above the horizon. Chaos reigned everywhere. The cart we had used to carry Mátyás lay tossed on its side, one wheel broken. But of Mátyás and Noémi, there was no sign.
They couldn’t have gone far: Noémi could not easily carry Mátyás’s weight, even thin as he was. I spun around, and my gaze snagged on a shelter some distance from us, a circular structure made of reeds bound together, the typical refuge of shepherds during the summer months. One side had collapsed, but it was the nearest thing that might offer a hiding spot.
When my horse got close, Noémi appeared in the entrance, brandishing a gun. When she saw who approached, she lowered her weapon with a long sigh.
“Anna. Thank God. We’ve got to get Mátyás somewhere safer.”
With the three of us working together, we managed to shove Mátyás onto the back of my horse. I mounted behind him, and the lidérc pulled Noémi up with her. We found a village a half mile or so from the fighting, a few watchful souls standing at the end of the main street, their faces turned to the distant boom of cannon fire. Noémi’s coins bought a bed in the home of one of the villagers who had not yet fled. I waited to see her and Mátyás secure before the lidérc and I headed back toward the battle.
“Stay,” Noémi said. “You’re not a soldier.”
“But the lidérc is,” I said. “And they will need help tending the wounded.” I was a poor fighter,
but I had two hands, and I had been learning how to work in the field hospitals when I was not helping Noémi with Mátyás. Besides, I needed to know what was happening if I was to have any hope of ending this war, slim as that hope was.
I found the hospital almost at once, a tent set up some distance from the fighting. The lidérc did not stay but saluted me before riding toward the battle to look for Emilija. And then I had little time for speculating, because the work of the hospital demanded my attention. I fetched cloths and washed them out again and pressed them to wounds that never seemed to stop bleeding and held the hands of dying men and women.
There were so many of them.
My hands grew red with blood, rubbed so deep into the pores of my skin that I gave up trying to rinse it out. I had not worn gloves in months: I took a grim amusement in thinking how Mama would react to the toughening of my once-soft hands.
By the time darkness fell, I was wavering on my feet. I had not slept in nearly two days. One of the nurses noticed and told me to get some sleep. I had not gone ten steps from the tent when someone grabbed me, wrapping strong arms around my waist.
After shouting and jabbing an elbow in my assailant’s gut, I realized it was no strange soldier but Gábor. He released me, holding his hands before him in a gesture of truce. His hair stood up around his head; his eyes were wild. “I couldn’t find you. I’ve been all through the field, and I could not find you. I thought—” He broke off.
“I’m fine,” I said, slipping my arms around him. “Only tired. I helped Noémi move Mátyás to safety and came here. How bad is it?”
“Bad enough,” he said. “The Russians have cut off General Bem, crushing our armies between them and the Austrians. General Görgey has called an emergency meeting with the surviving generals this evening. No doubt he will have new information for us then.”
I yawned, and Gábor caught it from me. “Tell me after I’ve slept,” I said, and Gábor agreed.
* * *
I dreamed I was back in the caverns again, once more sealed inside rock by Chernobog, but this time I could not seem to break free. When a pale hand thrust itself through the stone, I took it gratefully, my dream self finding no incongruity in a disembodied hand pulling me through rock where my own efforts could not.
Emerging from the stone, I found myself in a room of glass and crystal, silver threads of light catching on the faceted stones and refracting into a thousand tiny rainbows, a thousand gleams of fire.
The hand released me. I looked left, my thanks fading on my tongue as I saw who had pulled me through.
“You’re welcome,” Pál said, his pale eyes bright with amusement.
I scrubbed my right palm along my left arm, trying to wipe away an uneasy sense of grime. Even if my own subconscious had called him there, having my uncle in my dream felt like a violation.
“Wake up,” I whispered, willing my exhausted self to perk up.
“Waking up won’t help you,” Pál said. “When you dream again, I will find you. You might as well hear me out now.”
A great chill enveloped me, as though someone had ripped off the blanket covering my sleeping self. “You’re a dream walker.”
“I’m a bit of everything,” Pál said, smiling. “And you, dear niece, should curb your lamentable habit of stating the obvious. My being a dream walker has nothing to do with the point….Well, perhaps a little.”
He paused for a moment, long enough for gooseflesh to prickle on my dream arms.
“I have your cousin Mátyás. His spirit is trapped in rock walls, much like the ones you’ve dreamed of.”
Cold fear pinched my heart. Pál continued, “I imagine he is dying in the real world, wherever you have stashed his body. That is not uncommon when walkers wander so far that their spirits cannot return.”
Licking lips that were suddenly dry, even in my dream, I asked, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I would like to propose a trade. You—or him. His body, that is. Give me either of the two, and I will release his spirit. Chimera or táltos—I’m not picky. I’d prefer you, of course, as I think you’re more manageable, but I’ll take either. Blood calls to blood, you know, and you both share mine.”
I thought of what Pál and the Four might accomplish with me, with my uncertain spell-breaking. I thought of what the praetheria might accomplish with a táltos, and my blood froze. “Me,” I said. “You may have me, if you release Mátyás.”
Pál told me, briefly and concisely, how I might make the trade, and vanished.
The crystal room imploded, shards of ice raining into my face.
I woke, gasping.
There was ice on the tips of my lashes—but these did not contain the salt of tears.
Overhead, a half-moon shone over the frosted field. It was December 17, four days until solstice. A Sunday, though any religious observance had been largely abandoned as the battle wore on.
It didn’t matter.
It was the end of the world.
* * *
I found Gábor pacing outside a tent at the center of a hasty encampment and told him of my dream.
“What will you do?” he asked.
I let myself have a heartbeat to think how I loved this about Gábor: his willingness to let me make my own choices, even when it was dangerous.
“I will make the trade,” I said. “What choice do I have? If I do nothing, Mátyás will die—and I will not be the cause of his death a second time. If we give them Mátyás’s body, and they find a way to use him as a weapon…”
“Perhaps there is another choice. Perhaps—” He paused, staring at something behind me, his brow knitting together, then lifting, as though the sunlight had broken early.
I turned around. A large man strode through the camp, a blue Lumen light illuminating his way, casting deep plum shadows across his copper armor, across the horned helm he wore. Hadúr. Behind him, scrambling to keep pace with the war god’s long-limbed stride, came Bahadır. The Turkish boy carried a banner I had never seen overhead: a gold ash tree emblazoned on a green field.
Hadúr nodded at us as he came and then entered the tent. Bahadır followed him. Gábor and I glanced at each other, then hurried inside behind them. No one stopped us.
The generals appeared to be in the midst of an argument, which broke off at Hadúr’s appearance.
General Görgey spoke first. “Hála Istennek.” He removed his spectacles and rubbed them against his shirt, then replaced them with a long sigh. “We could use your help, Hadak Ura. The Austrians have us penned in on all sides, and our situation is dire. We thought we’d lost you after our intemperate speech earlier.”
“A wise man”—Hadúr glanced at Bahadır—“urged me to put aside my pride. He reminded me that wars are not won by lone heroes. Rather, wars are won by soldiers—a hundred men and women working together. We will win this together, or not at all.”
Hadúr raised his chin and swept his glance around the tent. Even those who had protested his presence earlier were rapt with attention: Kossuth, the general with the pointed beard, the commander with the broad red cheeks. Desperation made an excellent persuasive tool. “I will help you end this war, but only on my terms. We will not fight to win a battle against the Austrians or the Russians—or against the praetheria, who are even now mobilizing against you. We fight to win a future for human and praetherian alike. We fight not to kill but to win an opening for parley. The only way to open negotiations is to make the war too costly to continue.”
My heart began burning. This—this was the answer I’d sought, a way to end the war and create a space for negotiation.
There was some discussion among the generals when Hadúr paused, but it was not as lengthy or heated as I’d expected. The generals had the look of drowning men who had unexpectedly been thrown a rope to save themselves and were doing every
thing in their power to cling to it.
At last, Kossuth stood. “We accept your terms.”
“If we win, the praetheria must be given a place in Hungary—not driven out,” Hadúr warned.
Kossuth nodded. “We are prepared to discuss terms.”
Hadúr walked to the center of the room and stabbed his finger into the map displayed there. He began to lay out a strategy for holding off both the Austrians and the Russians.
“And the praetheria?” someone asked.
“The best way to kill a snake is to cut off its head,” Hadúr said. “The praetherian armies are driven by the Four—currently, three—who lead them, and if their leadership falls apart, their armies might be more willing to discuss terms.
“These three will not be easy to stop, though. Each is immensely powerful and has honed that power over centuries, and they will be well protected behind their troops. We might lure them out with a challenge, if we have any praetheria willing to issue one, but they will not accept such challenges from human soldiers. If it comes to it, I can challenge one, but that leaves two unaccounted for.”
Vasilisa’s voice whispered in my head: And you—chimera—what makes you human rather than praetherian? Not your double soul.
“Might I do it?” I asked. When everyone turned to look at me, I flushed. I knew what they saw: an indeterminate young person in a soldier’s trousers and shirt. I did not look capable of taking on anyone in this room, let alone one of the remaining Four. My magic was largely defensive: breaking spells, not launching them. I did not truly believe I could face Vasilisa, Svarog, or Chernobog—but it was the only thing I had to offer.
Hadúr was not unkind when he said, “I don’t think so. They would tear you apart.”
He had not said I was too human—but his answer was clear. No.
“Then might Mátyás, as táltos?” I asked.
The grim lines in Hadúr’s face deepened. “He might—if he were not dying.”