Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 11

  “Yes. Your father – grant me pardon for this, beloved – is a garrulous old gentleman, worse even than your dear mother. They both love to gossip, whether face to face or in their letters. This, however,” she tapped the sheets of parchment with one finger, “when compared to their other letters, is terse to the point of rudeness. And of all the things your parents have been, are and will be, rude isn’t one of them. We’ll go to Khorlov just as quickly as we can.”

  “How?”

  “Do you really need to ask?” said Mar’ya Morevna. “The quickest way is in the stables.” Ivan groaned softly, remembering past discomforts or anticipating others yet to come. “I know, I know; but those horses cover as much distance in one day as would take a week mounted on anything else.”

  “Yes indeed. And that one day of travel gives you all the aches and pains of being in the saddle for a week.”

  “You didn’t object last time,” said Mar’ya Morevna, perhaps more primly than she intended.

  “Last time we were being chased by Koshchey the Undying. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Of course not. But until we find out what’s troubling your father, can either of us put hand on heart and say that it’s any less urgent?”

  Ivan looked and felt slightly ashamed. “I was thinking of myself…”

  “No. You were thinking of your backside. At least you weren’t thinking through it.”

  “And I was thinking of a Gate.”

  Mar’ya Morevna looked at him, impressed. “You really have been keeping up with your studies, haven’t you? Exceeding them, in fact, because they’re not mentioned in the grimoire I gave you. So where did you read about Gates?”

  “I found a book, I think it was one of your father’s, in the library. It was mostly maps, but there was a sheaf of handwritten notes bound into the front.” Ivan went on the defensive. “If I wasn’t supposed to see things like that, they shouldn’t have been on the shelf in plain view.”

  “That’s one of the older excuses,” said Mar’ya Morevna disapprovingly. “You should be able to do better. And you should know well enough by now that what’s mine is yours. The last time I didn’t trust you enough to leave something in plain view, or at least tell you about it, we had no end of trouble.”

  “Koshchey.”

  “Who else. We’d have as much trouble with a Gate. They’re just as dangerous as Old Rattlebones. My father, God give him rest,” – she crossed herself – “found the Gate spells during his travels in the Prusiskai country, and being wary as well as wise, he researched them before he tried to use them. It was just as well, because—”

  “But I thought you just constructed the Gate where you were, and stepped out at the other end…” Ivan’s interruption trailed off at the look on Mar’ya Morevna’s face. “Ah. Apparently not.”

  “Definitely not. Tell me: how would you work out where the other end was going to be?”

  Prince Ivan opened his mouth, hesitated for an instant while he thought about what he was going to say, decided not to, and closed it again.

  “Exactly. You would just make a wish, eh?” Mar’ya Morevna punched one fist into the palm of the other hand. “And that’s what would happen. Unless you were very lucky indeed, and my father Koldun didn’t believe in luck, you’d step out of the other side of the gate and find yourself—”

  “Halfway up a tree?” said Ivan, and might have laughed except for a punch hard in the chest that turned the unborn laughter into a cough.

  “Stop interrupting, and pay attention! Halfway through a tree more likely, or standing – not for very long – on thin air two feet to the wrong side of the tower-top you’d planned to land on, or six feet under the ground without the benefit of a funeral, or sharing the same space as a kremlin wall.”

  Mar’ya Morevna quirked an eyebrow at him. “The wall and the tree and the ground were all there first. That place in the world is theirs. They would win. I should think that compared to any of those prospects, an aching rump from too much time on horseback is much to be preferred. My father suspected that just wishing to be in a place wasn’t enough, that you had to go there the long way and prepare what he called somewhere soft to land. Afterwards, of course, there shouldn’t be any problem. It would be like knowing the safe route.”

  “We both know Khorlov—”

  “But neither of us know where that soft landing-place might be. Nor the protocols of the spell, for that matter. And I for one don’t plan to jump into the dark without being certain that there’s a nice thick mattress waiting at the bottom. Concede defeat, Vanyushka. The only bottom involved here is the one that fits the saddle.”

  *

  The rest of the morning was taking up in arranging the running of the realm during its ruler’s absence. Those arrangements had been made many times before, but never with as much urgency as now. Normally when Mar’ya Morevna took leave of her kremlin for whatever reason, there were several days of preparation; today, however, she grudged even a necessary several hours.

  Her High Steward was the only person in the whole kremlin – with the exception of Mother Wolf, who had received the news with total equanimity and then gone back to sleep – who seemed unruffled by the Tsarevna’s abrupt departure. Fedor Konstantinovich at least had the advantage of not needing to be told his duties, since they remained the same whether Mar’ya Morevna was at home or halfway across the wide white world, and he eased matters considerably by spending a quarter hour in discussion with her, and then proceeding to do half, and more than half, of the giving of instructions.

  Of all the things that a ruler should bear in mind when selecting a High Steward, she had once told Ivan, three were most important of all: that he should be loyal, capable, and without a trace of ambition. Otherwise, the first time the ruler went away, it might be a waste of time returning home again…

  Ivan thought about that more than once, knowing that what he felt – it wasn’t anything as fully-formed as a suspicion – had more to do with his own personal dislike of Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin than anything the man had said or done in all the years Ivan had known him. He was khitriy, a word meaning both shrewd and subtle; very right and proper for a Tsar’s High Steward, and as much a part of his position at court as his staff of office and his long grey beard.

  But the word also had less flattering interpretations: a person considered khitriy could also be crafty, sly and cunning, and even though there were certain Great Princes of the Rus who encouraged such attitudes among the wise men in their service, Ivan wasn’t happy with the thought of one standing behind his father’s throne.

  It was all nonsense, of course. Probably. Strel’tsin had been High Steward to the Khorlovskiy Tsars for more years than most people in Khorlov had lived, never mind remember, and in all those years he had never betrayed their trust. It seemed unlikely that he would pick now to do it. Even so, Ivan found it easier to focus his mind on something he could understand, no matter how unlikely it might be; otherwise his brain filled with wild imaginings that were far more unpleasant than an old family servant turning traitor.

  Despite his tutoring in the running of a tsardom, first from Dmitriy Vasil’yevich and then from Mar’ya Morevna, Ivan still found himself sitting in the idle eye of an industrious hurricane. It was all very well being instructed what to do, but after that someone had to ask you to help do it, and they seemed to be getting on well enough without his assistance. Finally he made his excuses and escaped gratefully to the stables.

  He had been set onto his first saddle when he was too small to reach it unaided, by the Don Cossack who commanded his father’s guards, and even though he had fallen off again almost at once, Ivan understood horses rather better than the tangled motives of politics. He understood his own great coal-black stallion even better than Captain Akimov had taught him and indeed, sometimes better than he understood Akimov himself, since despite so many years in Khorlov, the Guard-Captain still had a heavy Cherkassk accent.

  The horse Siv
ka had no accent at all.

  Instead he had a voice like the great-bass oktavist singers of Khorlov’s cathedral and Ivan, long since accustomed to the fact that he could carry on a conversation with his horse and more to the point get a sensible reply, had once tried teaching Sivka to sing. That had been after his saint’s-day dinner and rather more vodka than was good for him, but it still said a great deal about Sivka’s love for his master that the big black beast had restrained himself like a gentleman, merely observing mildly that horses didn’t sing, and it was probably just as well they didn’t drink vodka either. A pity, Ivan had thought through the pounding of his head the next day. Sivka would provide a fine deep bass in any close harmony he cared to name.

  “Good morning to you, little master,” said that same voice as Ivan came into the stable. Straw rustled as something huge and heavy shifted its position and peered through the shadows that lay thick in the winter’s dawn. “There seems a deal of bustle in the kremlin today.”

  “Too much for me, old friend.” Ivan glanced into the tack-room to make sure everything was in place: saddles arranged on padded bars, reins and bridles and headstalls all hanging from their proper hooks. “I felt like you must when the blacksmith puts on your shoes: standing in one place and looking like a piece of furniture, while everything else goes on behind your back.”

  “You never felt tempted to kick, the way I do, just to let them know once in a while that you’re still there?” said Sivka, and snorted to himself. Prince Ivan grinned; coming as it did from a trained war-horse who was at the same time the calmest animal during a shoeing that Ivan had ever seen, that was a piece of arrant nonsense.

  “I kicked my way out, but very quietly,” he said. “It seemed the best thing to do at the time.” His eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom, which was a necessary part of seeing a black horse in an unlit stable. “We have to go to Khorlov.”

  Sivka stood up and shook straw from himself, then stamped. Even standing six feet away, Ivan felt the concussion of that hoof slamming against the stable floor. It was just such a hoof that had hammered Koshchey the Undying back into oblivion, smashing him so dead that being immortal didn’t seem to matter any more. Everything about the black horse was magical in one way or another; as in his speech and his speed and the way he had grown from a dirty colt rolling in the mire to a full-grown horse in seven days, but also magical to one who, knowing the good and bad points of horseflesh, had encountered animals that brought a whole new meaning to the term ‘dumb brute’. Sivka had no faults: he neither kicked nor bit without good reason, he didn’t throw his head up unnecessarily – the cause of more broken noses than falling out of the saddle – and most wonderful of all, he didn’t plant those iron-shod platters of hoofs on other people’s tender toes.

  “How quickly do you want to be there?” the horse asked, looking at his manger. It wasn’t an idle question, since the faster Sivka ran, the hungrier he was at the end of it and the more food he needed beforehand. Ivan glanced about, saw what he was looking for, and rather than summon a servant, lifted the grain-bag with his own hand and balanced it on the other side with a new bale of fresh, sweet hay. Sivka watched him, and blinked his long-lashed eyes.

  “Ah. That quickly.” He began to eat.

  Mar’ya Morevna’s horse Chyornyy was own brother to Sivka, and had once belonged to Koshchey the Undying – if belonging could begin to describe the cruel, abject slavery which that dark sorcerer laid on the brave beast. He could speak too, but not often and for a simple reason: whenever Chyornyy had spoken to his old master, and no matter how useful that speech might have been, the horse was beaten for it.

  Koshchey Bessmertny had been one who could always find an excuse to beat his servants, whether human or animal. The horse had been too slow in speaking, or had spoken insolently, or had said something that Koshchey hadn’t liked to hear. As a result, now he was under no obligation to speak unless he had something worthwhile to say, Chyornyy was usually as quiet as an ordinary horse, though Ivan would have been first to admit that, like Sivka, his stable-brother’s behaviour was far too good for either horse to be anything other than magic.

  Chyornyy stirred a little, then scrambled up from his bed as Ivan peered into the stall and wished him a good morning. The horse trusted Ivan as he trusted no other human on the face of Moist-Mother-Earth, because the young Tsarevich had been the first person in his life to utter a kind word of any sort. Born into Baba Yaga’s horse-herd in the desolate land beyond the burning river, and considered useless because he wouldn’t eat the flesh of men as all the other horses did, he had become Koshchey’s steed and faithful servant, his servitude and faithfulness enforced by fear. There had been no soft words from either of them, only curses, threats and hard blows for no good reason.

  “I smelt a wolf’s smell on the wind last night, Prince Ivan,” said Chyornyy in a small, scared voice, nuzzling against Ivan’s outstretched hand. “I still smell it now, by the light of day.” He was a stallion as big as Sivka, and a year of grooming and good food had banished the wretched, whip-scarred animal he had been; but Ivan was aware that having spent most of his life afraid of something or other, this horse found it very easy to be afraid again.

  Especially of wolves.

  In the next stall the steady munching of hay ceased for a moment, and Sivka snorted in a reassuring way. “No need for fear, brother,” he said. “I know that smell. It’s a wolf indeed, but the mother wolf who saved my little master from Baba Yaga’s cauldron. You could call her a friend.”

  “A wolf?”

  “Then call her not an enemy.”

  “But a wolf for all that.” Chyornyy put his ears flat back against his skull, stamping and grumbling and swishing his tail during the whole time that Ivan saw to his feed and made sure there was plenty of clean water for them both to drink.

  As he untied hay and poured out oats, Ivan wondered all that time how he would explain to both horses that, in the not-too-distant future, the wolf-son of that wolf-mother would be entering his service as only the good God knew what. Despite her human form, Mother Wolf still carried the scent of her true shape, and confident declarations of friendship might not last beyond the first time that either son or mother came too close. And that was only Sivka.

  From the sound of it, Chyornyy would be far worse. A skittish horse’s definition of safe distance, even with an ordinary rider that it knew and trusted, could be the length and width of whatever field they happened to be paddocked in. If a far-from-ordinary thing that looked like a human but smelt like a wolf stepped inside that safe distance, one of the sorcerous steeds would be halfway across Russia before pausing to think that such a reaction was excessive.

  Then he dismissed the problem, if it was really a problem at all and not just one more of those pointless niggles his mind was manufacturing so he had something other than unexplained fears to worry about. The wolf might be a problem when the time came; when it became that problem, rather than just the possibility of one, would be the time to be concerned. There were other things to deal with long before then.

  Such as feeding himself, for instance, and putting provisions for the ride to Khorlov into his saddlebags. There wouldn’t be much, since a journey that took one day instead of several required food and water only for that day. Bread, wine, some cheese, some sausage if Mother Wolf had left any in the kitchens; not much, but enough when they broke for a midday meal and he and Mar’ya Morevna tried to work the cramps out of their muscles. He was less concerned about what they would eat come nightfall, for if black Sivka moved as fast as he was able, it would be dinner at his father’s table.

  Call it five hours instead of five days, he thought as he left the stable. Then he looked up at the sky, frowned slightly, and revised both figures upwards. The lowering clouds were leaden grey, heavy with more snow. The ground crunched beneath his booted feet, frozen hard by the overnight frost, and that at least would provide firm going for the horses. Not too firm, Ivan hoped; rid
ing across the iron ground of deep winter without fresh, soft snow to cushion their hoofs could do a horse’s legs as much damage as galloping the beast on cobblestones.

  But not this pair, once they got into their stride. After that, the state of the ground – or even whether there was any ground at all – seemed not to matter. Mar’ya Morevna, better educated in such matters than her husband, had said that once they attained full speed the horses from Baba Yaga’s herd no longer ran across the face of the wide white world as ordinary mortal creatures had to do. Instead they set their hoofs on some other earth where the ground was flat and free of potholes, and where they always knew the swiftest route to take; the straightest line between two points, whether points on a map or points in time. Ivan had never dared to test the theory: putting Sivka at an unbridged river and watching to see if the black stallion jumped or ran across it seemed to be tempting Fate. It was enough for him that his mount ran with an even gait and had no vices except for a tendency to make bad jokes.

  Ivan thought of his ongoing tuition in the Art Magic and wondered when Mar’ya Morevna would start teaching him something like this, something that had at least a semblance of logic and order to it. It would make a pleasant change from lists of hard-to-pronounce names, and lists of grisly creatures that such names would call up from the Pit if he ever succeeded in forcing the jarring conglomeration of letters out of his throat. Say the name, summon the Named. Names that couldn’t be spoken aloud even if he ever learned how. Now that, if asked, was what Prince Ivan called a truly pointless education. It was just as well that no one ever asked…

  Then someone called his name. Wrapped in a heavy fur coat with sleeves that reached beyond her gloved fingertips and a hem hanging almost to her booted heels, Mar’ya Morevna strode across the courtyard. As she swirled the coat across her body to close it with the loops and toggles that ran down its right side, it billowed out despite its weight and Ivan could see the furred Cossack kaftan and the baggy, quilted trousers that she wore beneath. A scarf hung around her neck, a fur hat with earflaps was on her head, and garments of similar material and generous cut were being carried by the servants who hurried in her wake.