Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Page 3

  “Second is their refusal to accept the Pope as head of Christ’s Church on Earth.” Again the grin. “His Holiness Pope Innocent considered this an offence against the laws of man as well as God, but at the time he was more concerned with the Albigensian heretics under his nose than with the Rus half a world away. Now the Cathars are gone, and Pope Gregory’s attention has returned to the heathen doings of the Russians. That might provoke beneficial for the Order, if nothing else.

  “Thirdly, the Rus practice sorcery without the Papal dispensation required by good Christians. Further, they continued to make their spells even when Honorious banned it as devil-worship. As if they were all Templars. Even when they make the sign of the cross they do it backwards!”

  “But Grand Master, why would they ask the Pope’s permission to do anything, if they don’t regard him as the head of their Church?”

  Hermann von Salza laughed aloud and clapped his hands. “Exactly so!” he said, then leaned forward and stared at his Treasurer. “Will you explain that small point to Pope Gregory? Because I won’t.”

  “Ah.” This time it was von Düsberg’s turn to grin. “Damned if they do, and doubly damned and apostate if they don’t.” He considered von Salza’s convoluted mode of thought for a moment. “Have they been excommunicated?”

  Surprised and caught off-balance, the Grand Master looked dubiously at his Treasurer. He’d never considered that particular question or its answer, since an excommunicate by the very nature of the word had once, if no longer, been a member of the Catholic Church. “I doubt it,” he said. Then he closed his teeth with a click as von Düsberg’s question provided him with the argument that would stand if all the others fell aside. “They can’t be excommunicates, because they were never a part of the Roman Church. That means they were never baptized, or married, or buried by the rites of the Roman Church. Therefore…” Von Salza waved one hand, generously inviting Albrecht to complete the premise. “Sic provo…”

  “Thus I prove that the Rus are apostate schismatics, and heathen infidels abhorrent in the sight of God. Just like the Saracens.”

  “And just as ripe for a crusade.”

  Von Düsberg leaned forward to pour wine for them both, then lifted his cup. “To the Crusade in the East,” he said. Then, with eyes piously upraised towards Heaven, “and to the souls saved from darkness.”

  “Yes indeed. And that, though you never asked it, is why I brought you all the way from Salzaburg.” Calmly and deliberately the Grand Master gave the city its old, full name for the first time, and watched as von Düsberg realized the full implications behind that time-eroded vowel.

  “Oh yes. Salzaburg it is, and always was, since the first of our line to bear the name of Hermann built his wood-walled fortress on the hill above the valley. My family have owned the town and all the lands around it since before the Romans came. We know everything, and everyone, within the walls, and we have made…call them accommodations…with Rome ever since. You’re to make another. They call them propaganda now. So, for the sake of the Order: make a propaganda to set before the Pope, so when we move against the Russians none will question the purity of our motives. Do you understand me, Albrecht?”

  “Perfectly, Grand Master.” The Treasurer’s face was immobile. He had his orders, and like all within the greater Order, he would follow those lesser orders without question.

  “Good.” Von Salza raised his own cup and stared at von Düsberg over its rim once more. “And you forgot something again,” he said. “This time in your blessing – or was it a victory toast? To the souls saved from darkness – and to their lands and gold. Pros’t!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Independent Principality of Koldunov;

  November, 1234 A.D.

  The birch-trees were bare and stark against a sky that had clouded to a sickly yellow-backed grey, and there was a chilly edge to the wind that swirled their dead leaves to and fro in the kremlin gardens. A promise of snow was in the air. Heavy snow. The Russian winter was coming.

  That same cold nipped with sharp teeth at the nose and ears of Prince Ivan Aleksandrovich Khorlovskiy, making him shiver and mutter something questionable under a breath that came out like smoke. He was richly dressed in furs and silks and velvets, but neither his hat nor his coat nor his boots had the bright colours and embroidery that usually ornamented the clothes of a Rus nobleman. All was stark, simple black and silver that looked like mourning and, in an odd way, it was.

  This had begun as a celebration of the year’s end, its death and burial beneath the shroud of winter snow; but before long the young, the wealthy and the fashionable had found it a fine opportunity to parade as monochrome peacocks. There was so much more challenge when choice of colour was restricted, so the golds and russets of autumn clothing gave way to winter fashions, all chosen to dramatically contrast with the crisp white of new-fallen snow and the hard-edged darkness of leafless trees.

  The trees were bare enough, but as if to mock several weeks of work by the kremlin tailors, the snow hadn’t fallen yet. Promissory nips at the nose were all very well, but they didn’t compensate for looking improperly dressed. One might as well have stayed in autumn colours or gone out as naked as the trees as be seen out-of-doors in black before the snow began to fall. And of course, once the first flakes came shivering from the sky, there would be the usual mad scramble for chests and wardrobes and dressing-rooms, so that one could parade elegantly for a few minutes, black and white among the black and white, before diving indoors for mulled wine or chilled vodka and another round of trivial, empty-headed chatter.

  Prince Ivan stared at the empty sky for a few seconds and sniffled briefly, then hunched his shoulders so the deep sable fur of his collar rose high enough to give at least an illusion of warmth, and kicked at the leaves rustling about his ankles.

  “This has gone on for long enough,” he said. “My ears have left for a warmer climate and my nose doesn’t want to know me any more. Can’t we go inside now?”

  The woman who walked beside him in the garden glanced in his direction, a look that said so what? as plainly as any words. There was sympathy and a sharing of discomfort in her cool blue eyes, but she also had the tolerant amusement as anyone out for a quiet stroll might wear when their companion starts talking nonsense. Except for certain sorts of nonsense, which might not be nonsense at all. She too was wearing black, and against all that darkness her hair, fairer even than Ivan’s, seemed almost silver-gilt. She was Mar’ya Morevna, a sorceress of great power, a noted commander of armies, known to be the fairest princess in all the Russias, and above all else she was Ivan’s wife, who glanced sidelong at her husband and smiled.

  “I suppose I could provoke enough snow to make all this worthwhile, but what would be the point in that?”

  “It would mean we could go inside with snow on our boots like good winter Rus, and be foremost in fashion again. For what that’s worth.”

  “Poor Vanyushka.” Mar’ya Morevna cooed the endearment in a way she knew and intended to be teasing. “His nose is cold, and his ears are frozen, and he’s had to dress up like a prince again. Shame, shame.”

  Ivan grinned at her, stretching the grin well beyond the limits of propriety. “Vanyushka knows a way to warm his nose and both his ears, all at once,” he said. “But Mar’yushka wouldn’t like it. At least, she wouldn’t like it right out here in the garden. The servants would be scandalized.”

  “There’s a temptation, my dear husband, to call down just enough snow for a fair-sized snowball, and use it to cool your ardour right here.” Ivan parried her hand, a deceptively lazy movement that he knew from past experience had all the power of a fencer’s thrust behind it, then laughed and pulled her close.

  “Gently, gently,” he murmured, lips almost touching her ear. “We’re still trying for an heir, remember?”

  “How could I forget?” Mar’ya Morevna purred like a big cat and snuggled into her husband’s arms, hooding her eyes behind long lashes. “I
could wish that all our princely duties were so pleasant.”

  “They could be. Just leave the unpleasant ones for High Steward Konstantinovich.”

  “No!” Mar’ya pushed him away, just hard enough for her annoyance at the suggestion to be made quite plain. “Ivan, you have some charming vices, but to top them all, you’re lazy. There are things in a realm like mine that only I – or you – can do properly. Administration of law, financial conclusions…” She smiled wryly, admitting that such subjects bored her just as much as him. But they were there, and had to be done. It was only a fool or an incurable romantic – or Prince Ivan of Khorlov in his less energetic moods – who thought that ruling a tsardom meant no more that wearing a crown, lolling on a throne and drinking blood-red wine from a golden cup. “The High Steward is there to help, but he’s not there to do your work for you.”

  “Humph,” said Ivan, discontented and slightly frustrated as the feeling of leisurely lechery was washed away in a cold shower of duty. “Then if I’m supposed to tell the servants what to do, I could start with,” he looked vaguely about the kremlin gardens before focusing on the ground right at his feet, “these leaves. I thought they’d been raked up and burnt last month.” He jabbed at them for emphasis with his silver-shod ebony walking-stick. “It looks as if the gardeners have been skimping their duties.” This time he kicked at the leaves, a pointless gesture that did no more than stir them up before they settled back around his red-heeled boots.

  “Tell the servants, but don’t blame them unless you’re sure. And, in this instance especially, don’t blame the gardeners,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “You saw the leaves were burnt, and you know they were burnt.”

  “Do you know,” Ivan said, poking the toe of one boot at the leaves as they came whispering back, “it’s almost as if they were following me.” A capricious gust of wind caught the leaves, picked them up and played with them, then swirled them around in a column that came almost waist-high before it collapsed back on itself.

  Mar’ya Morevna’s smile vanished abruptly, and when it returned after a few seconds it seemed thinner and much less amused. She stared at Ivan more closely now, searching for something in his face that might have been there whether he meant it or not. His father Tsar Aleksandr occasionally saw with True Sight, and perhaps the Tsar’s son had inherited the gift that was no gift at all – for what kindness is it to know, among all else, the time and manner of one’s own death? Whatever it was Mar’ya Morevna sought she didn’t find, and dismissed the notion with a gesture that had more than a little relief about it.

  “Perhaps they are,” she said quietly. “When you cut down Koshchey the Undying, we burnt his body. The winds of the wide white world took his ashes and spread them all across Moist-Mother-Earth. Look at the sand on the beach, or the snow in winter – or these leaves. Watch how they swirl together, as if each has a part that wants to join with the next. Koshchey was Undying. I think all the best that we could do was make him lie still for long enough to let us do…what we did.”

  Mar’ya Morevna drew a deep breath. “There always was a little of Koshchey in all of us. Mankind was never perfect. But now, I think there may be just a little more.” Her humourless smile went crooked. “I never gave you any promise he was dead when we burnt him, and we’ve been breathing his dust for almost half a year…”

  Ivan walked on for a few paces as if he hadn’t heard her words, or as if instant reaction to them was beneath a Rus prince. Then he stopped short, his nose wrinkling in disgust as the full weight of her meaning struck home, and he crossed himself quickly.

  “God between us and harm,” he said. “That’s horrible…”

  Mar’ya Morevna was unruffled. Her experience with sorcery had inured her to things far uglier than this. “Perhaps. But would you rather have him dust in the air – or whole and entire, and I as his prisoner, and yourself as hacked pieces in a barrel in the sea?”

  Ivan stared at his wife for a moment, saying nothing. It had happened, all of it, just as she said, when he died under Koshchey the Undying’s blade, head chopped from body and body chopped to shreds, and only the skills and wisdom of his three brothers-in-law, sorcerers all, had restored him to life. He reached up to touch his neck just at the spot where Koshchey had sliced it through.

  “Dust is preferable. I’d rather be alive than dead.”

  “Amen to that.” Mar’ya Morevna crossed herself in turn, then reached out to touch his hand. “I would rather have you here and now, irritable about the state of the garden and unwilling to do your work, than as the best of memories. No matter how closely you hold a memory, it won’t keep you warm at night.”

  Ivan quirked one corner of his mouth into a sour grimace at that new reminder of work undone. The High Steward Fedor Konstantinovich was always most grateful when his liege’s husband declined to help. Ivan’s grasp of palace book-keeping was sketchy at best, and his methods of improvising round that ignorance a deal more trouble than they were worth. But it wasn’t the running of the realm that made Ivan reluctant to think of work. It was the book that even now he carried in the crook of one arm. Unlike memory, it was warm. That was the problem. Even on a day as cold as this, it was always warm.

  *

  Mar’ya Morevna had long since determined to teach her husband as much of the Art Magic and the rules that governed it as his brain could contain. Like most people in the wide white world whether Rus or Frank or Saracen, he already knew some little sorcery, but that was far from enough to satisfy her.

  Ivan had made too many mistakes with Koshchey Bessmertny and with the witch Baba Yaga, one of those mistakes had killed him, and it wasn’t a situation that Mar’ya Morevna intended should happen again.

  “Once is unfortunate. Twice would be careless. Three times, and I might think you were trying to get away from me…”

  Hence the slightly-too-warm book under his arm. Written on fine parchment and encased in an embossed and jewelled metal cover that made it look blasphemously like a missal, it was one of the grimoires from Mar’ya’s sorcerous library, and after skimming through some of its pages Ivan decided the ‘grim’ part was singularly appropriate. Certainly it wasn’t light reading, and not just because of the weight of its metal covers. The few things he’d already glanced at had caused him to lose his appetite, and very nearly his lunch.

  The book was called Enciervanul Doamnisoar, and though the letters of its title were proper Cyrillic so Ivan could sound them out, the language might have been impossibly antique Hungarian – or might have been nothing of the sort. It meant On the Summoning of Demons, and Ivan suspected that Mar’ya Morevna had given it to him more as a warning and a demonstration of what careless talk could do than as any sort of manual of instruction. One of his most frequent errors was to speak without thinking, but in matters of the Art Magic, ‘speak the Name and summon the Named’ was more than just a proverb. There were creatures described between the covers of this book that shouldn’t summoned even into a nightmare…

  Mar’ya Morevna seemed to sense her husband’s discomfort with his burden and reached out to tap the grimoire’s cover with one gloved finger. “Remember, I want you to read it, not just carry it about with you,” she said, “I want you to understand just what can be called up by someone careless.”

  Ivan thought of something described in the grimoire’s dry, pedantic Old Slavonic as the Devourer in the Dark, and shivered a little. “I can assure you, Mar’yushka, that five minutes with this book has given me a more than adequate understanding already.”

  “Good. Then just think of how well you’ll understand once you’ve spent five hours, or five days, of careful study.”

  That wasn’t quite what Ivan had hoped to hear, but it was more or less the sort of answer he might have expected. Mar’ya Morevna took all her responsibilities very seriously, whether they were as a sorceress, or a ruler, or a general – or, in any one of the many ways they coincided, as his wife.

  “God and Archbishop Levon Popov
ich both know that I try to be a good Orthodox Christian,” he protested. “But not even God knows what the Archbishop would say if he knew I was reading something as unorthodox as this! I already know enough sorcery for my own small needs.”

  Mar’ya Morevna’s finger tapped again, this time against his mouth. “Hush,” she said. “No you don’t, and I doubt you ever will. What I want you to learn is enough for your safety, and that’s a different matter, more to do with avoiding than understanding. But until you know what needs to be avoided…” She dismissed the rest of what might have been a lengthy lecture. “This is Koldunov, not Khorlov. You don’t live there any more.”

  Ivan wondered a little about her last words, and about the tone in which she spoke them. It was always remembering that Mar’ya Morevna had been a ruler of wide realms before she met him and though they were now husband and wife and very much in love, she was still the ruler of wide realms. Both in Khorlov and elsewhere there had been plenty of kings and tsars and princes whose fiery tempers and fondness for violence matched the breadth of their domains. Ivan hadn’t forgotten how Mar’ya Morevna had led her armies against the Tatar horde of Manguyu Temir, nor the way she had supervised the slaughter of almost five thousand men who hadn’t run away. If there was indeed any hidden meaning, warning or advice in the way she spoke, Ivan resolved to pay it all the attention that it deserved.

  “Quite so,” he said, and grinned briefly. It was a hard little grin, too tightly drawn for sincerity. “I consider myself properly chastised.”

  “Idiot,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “Vanya, unless you’re feeling warmer than you look, might I suggest we both go back inside the kremlin? There’s a fire in there, and that wine from Frankish Burgundy for our attention. It’s come a long way just to be ignored. And you still haven’t beaten me at chess.”

  “Never was a truer word spoken. I don’t know that I’ve ever beaten anyone at chess. Aren’t you afraid I’ll give up fair play and try to cheat?”