Firebird (Tales of Old Russia Book 2) Read online

  “Another puzzle?” Father Arnald looked amused. “Grand Master, all this is somewhat elaborate for so small a box. I could understand if it was big enough to hold something of value, but…” He made a disparaging gesture and tucked both hands inside his black and white Dominican habit. “It seems a waste of time.”

  Father Giacchetti evidently thought otherwise, if the expression on his wrinkled face was anything to go by. Von Salza saw it and gave the old Benedictine a quick smile.

  “You know better, don’t you?” he said, as rheumy eyes watched his every move. More pieces of metal shifted with tiny scraping sounds as the iron rod released a sheaf of slivers that bloomed into a shape to fit the keyhole. Now the Grand Master moved more carefully. The re-formed rod resembled a metallic flower, its petals glittering spikes edged and pointed like tiny razors, and would reward a lack of caution with wicked cuts. He took the cross that hung from the chain, fitted the foot of its upright into a slot at the base of the iron flower and turned this strange key in its stranger lock.

  Then he lifted the lid and dropped the papal parchment inside.

  Father Giacchetti swallowed audibly and crossed himself. An instant later, as the realization of what they had just seen sank in, von Jülich the steward and young Brother Johann did likewise, because the parchment, even rolled into a cylinder and tied tightly with the ribbons of its many pendant seals, was more than two feet long. The box into which it had dropped, without bending nor folding but as smoothly as a sword returning to the sheath, was only half that. Von Salza patted the strongbox like a dog that has performed a trick, then hefted it easily on the palm of one hand as if it weighed next to nothing.

  “This isn’t a waste of time,” he said. “Unless the lid and the lock and the key are all in alignment, there’s nothing inside. More than that: until the box is opened in the proper fashion, there’s no inside at all.” With the casket still resting on his open hand he reached inside, lifted the parchment scroll into view for a moment and then let it drop again. “And yet, once open, I’ve never found a limit to what may be put into it.”

  Father Arnald didn’t cross himself, and though his eyes went wide, that might have been no more than a reaction to the Grand Master’s impudent display of a magical artefact. They closed again in a long slow blink of satisfaction, and then he surged from his seat in righteous wrath.

  “Sorcery! I knew it!”

  “Of course you ‘knew’ it. Or you ‘suspected it all along’. Isn’t that the other thing inquisitors say? Or am I thinking of cuckolded husbands?” Von Salza gazed thoughtfully at Father Arnald for a few seconds. “But you shouldn’t know about such matters. Sit down, Father-Inquisitor. Such demonstrations are scarcely necessary now His Holiness has declared the use of the Art Magic is once more permissible to Christians.”

  “Permissible in certain circumstances,” said Arnald. “Where this Order is concerned, those circumstances have yet to be determined.”

  “Only this Order?” Albrecht von Düsberg slapped the table in irritation that was either genuine or very well feigned. “And what about the Knights Templar – or does wealth and the transfer of wealth have something to do with it?”

  Von Salza glanced at him approvingly. Those words were appropriate enough to for the Order’s treasurer, bringing mention of the Templars to the fore without betraying the presence of an informant either in Rome or in the retinue of the Papal envoys.

  “I echo my Treasurer’s concern in this matter. If sorcery is to be permitted or denied, then that permission or denial must be general. If gold has changed hands to ensure the inclusion or exclusion of a specific military Order, then as Grand Master of one such I should like to know about it.” He spoke softly, but there was an edge behind his voice like sharp steel contained within a fine scabbard.

  The words ‘I don’t know what you mean’ hovered on Father Arnald’s lips, but when he spoke at last it wasn’t to make excuses. “You will accompany me back to Rome,” he said, “to explain yourself and your accusations before the Pope.”

  “I think not,” said von Salza. “On the eve of a hazardous venture, my place is here with the Knights of the Order.”

  The contented look evaporated from the inquisitor’s face, replaced by astonishment and no little amount of disbelief. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I said. I remain here.” Von Salza surveyed the three monks with no great approval and his voice hardened. “And you will remain here too, all three of you, until such time as I see fit to let you go.”

  Old Giacchetti and young Brother Johann stared at him in mingled disbelief and horror, but Father-Inquisitor Arnald pounded his fist on the table like a stone from a siege-engine. “Have you no respect for the Holy Father, no respect for Rome, no respect for Mother Church?”

  “A great deal, for what they represent. But very little for the Pope himself, who is after all only human and subject to human failings. Such as believing the most recent thing he hears is the truth. Which is why, Father Arnald, you above all will be a guest in Burg Thorn. Until matters are settled one way or the other, I think it best that – shall we call them distorted reports? – of how I mean to conduct this war aren’t trickled like poison into Papal ears.”

  Von Salza looked out at the snow-heavy sky. “Rome, and the power of Rome, is far away. Remember that before you try to wield power no longer at your disposal. The troops who escorted you here are long since gone about their business, on the understanding that two lance-troops of Teutonic Knights would see you safely home again. I regret that’s no longer possible. With a crusade in the offing, my knights have better things to do.”

  Father Giacchetti and the two Dominican inquisitors stared at von Salza as though their own ears were playing them tricks, and Arnald spluttered something more about respect for Rome.

  The Grand Master raised one hand. “Enough of that. Rome’s influence on Germany has always been tenuous, and I’m not the first Hermann to put your people in their place when they step out of it.” For a moment Father Arnald looked blank. Hermann von Salza smiled wolfishly. “Think of the Teutoberg Forest. ‘Quintili Vare, legiones redde!’ What happened to three legions can so easily happen to three priests.”

  Arnald went red, then white. He had indeed heard of the Teutoberg Forest, and of what had happened there during the reign of Emperor Augustus. There had been a certain German chieftain, Arminus to the Romans but Hermann to the Teutonic tribes he led. Three of Augustus Caesar’s legions had hunted him into the dark Northern forests, and not one man of them had ever been seen again. Augustus had raved through his palace shouting ‘Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!’ – but it was Hermann of the Teutons who had taken them away.

  “The Inquisition won’t forget this, Grand Master,” said Arnald. He had regained control of his temper, and his voice was quieter than it had any right to be.

  “If our venture is successful, neither I nor the Teutonic Order will have many worries over that,” said von Salza. “And if we’re unsuccessful, the anger of the Holy Office will be the least of our concerns.”

  Father Arnald subsided back into his seat, drumming his fingers on the tabletop and staring at them as they danced against the polished wood. “Very well,” he said, “I accept your reasoning. But why, Grand Master, knowing that my abhorrence of heresy and witchcraft would provoke such a reaction, were you so blatant?”

  “A wise man tests the water with one foot before he jumps in. And if you think my little casket was a blatant display of magic, then be warned, there’s a deal more to follow. This strongbox is just an object incapable of feelings, but living practitioners of sorcery can and will be insulted by your…abhorrence.” Von Salza gazed calmly at the inquisitor. “Unlike those witches the Inquisition burned in Strassburg, out here on the frontiers of Christendom a witch is more than a bewildered old woman. So restrain your zeal. Sorcerers can take offence, and those who offend them suffer for it.”

  He turned to von Jülich. “You wer
e the last one into this meeting, Brother Wilhelm. Has Dieter Balke returned yet?”

  “Er, not yet, Grand Master.” Youngest and most junior of all the castle’s officers, the steward had been keeping very small and quiet throughout this discussion. Now the Grand Master and his entire Order had made enemies of the Holy Inquisition, he seemed appalled to be asked anything at all that might bring him to notice. “The, er, the messenger he sent ahead said that his arrival was—” The thin, high scream of a trumpet from the courtyard cut across his words, and von Jülich looked relieved. “Imminent,” he finished, and went back to being inconspicuous.

  Hermann von Salza laughed aloud. “The Constable of Livonia’s attendance on his cues are sometimes so perfect that I think he should have been an actor!” He glanced towards the tall, narrow windows that overlooked the castle courtyard, torn between wanting to go to look and wanting to maintain his dignity. “Assuming that’s Dieter Balke and not someone else entirely.”

  “If it is,” said Kuno von Buxhövden, “we’ll know soon enough.”

  *

  He was right. Within a few minutes, mail-clad feet came hammering along the wooden floor of the corridor outside. There was a brief knocking on the great double doors that was plainly only for courtesy’s sake, since before anyone could invite the knocker to come in he had done so by himself.

  The man who entered was as massively built as von Buxhövden, made more massive yet since he was clad in full mail with his crested helm in the crook of one arm. He stalked from doorway to table without looking either to the right or to the left, certain that after the Grand Master he was the most important man in the room.

  It was true enough, but as he watched the mailed figure stamp towards him, von Salza thought as he always did, that he had never seen rank and position displayed with such arrogant lack of subtlety. Dieter Balke ignored everyone else, sparing not even a glance for the Papal envoys though he must have known the presence of Dominican friars meant like as not the presence of the Holy Inquisition. He bowed his head briefly, then saluted with armoured fist to armoured chest.

  “Grand Master, I found you a sorcerer,” Balke said without further preamble. Then he grinned a big, sloppy grin like a retriever dog that hasn’t brought back the bird but is trying to make do by fetching the arrow instead. It was an odd expression for a man so powerful in both rank and physique, and served to dilute both his arrogance and his stature to more manageable proportions.

  Hermann von Salza had decided long ago that otherwise, Dieter Balke would be intolerable.

  The Landmeister flipped the fingers of his right hand free of their mail mitten and ran them through his cropped blond hair. “Or rather,” he corrected himself ruefully, “the sorcerer found me.”

  “There was no resistance? None at all?”

  “Quite the reverse. As I say, she came looking for us.”

  Von Salza blinked three times in rapid succession before he managed to get his facial muscles back under control. This was an unexpected random factor in the equation, so unexpected that he had never considered it at all. Talking about witches in the abstract was one thing; this was quite another.

  “She…?” he echoed for something to say, and shot a wary glance towards the monks.

  Father Giacchetti, disgusted with the whole business, was hunched up inside his black habit, wanting nothing further to do with the proceedings. Brother Johann was scribbling busily in his journal like a good secretary, and Father Arnald met the Grand Master’s eyes for only an instant before his own gaze wandered off elsewhere. It was impossible to tell what the inquisitor was thinking, but Hermann von Salza wished that Dieter Balke had arrived at some more opportune moment, or possessed the good sense to keep his mouth shut and himself out of the way.

  That was an idle dream. Balke and good sense were like oil and water: they didn’t mix without a severe shaking, and they separated out soon after.

  “Very well.” Von Salza brushed at his robes, tidying himself both physically and mentally. “Show us this volunteer, this flower of virtue that needed no persuasion.”

  “Volunteer yes, Grand Master,” said Balke with another of those grins. “But scarcely a flower. A weed, perhaps. Or a fungus. Certainly something poisonous.” He raised his free hand and snapped his fingers at the two sergeants standing to either side of the door. They moved with a flinching rapidity that suggested they were glad to do so, and someone came past them from the corridor outside.

  She was little and white-haired and wrinkled, and the heavy cloak she wore did little to disguise her cadaverous scrawniness; but it was her face that provoked a sudden flurry as everyone in the room – except for Dieter Balke, familiar by now with her appearance – signed themselves fervently with the cross. That face wasn’t just ugly, with hair-sprouting warts on chin and cheek and hatchet-blade nose; her eyes glittered with such wickedness that their direct gaze was a frightening thing.

  “This is Baba Yaga,” said Dieter Balke, waving his hand towards her; and if that gesture was less an introduction than a warning for the ancient hag to keep her distance, von Salza couldn’t blame him. “She claims,” the Landmeister continued, “that the sorceries she can work on our behalf have already begun.”

  “All well and good, if true.” The Grand Master looked her up and down, a quirk of disgust tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You are Rus, old witch-mother,” he said, granting her the title as all the ingrained courtesy of knighthood surfaced almost against his will. “You must know our intentions. Why did you volunteer to help?”

  Baba Yaga returned his stare, and her mouth twisted into what, on a less hideous face, might have been an ingratiating smile. “Dear Lord and Master,” she said, her voice a beggar’s whine, “are you and your knights of the black cross so pure that none of you can understand revenge?”

  “Revenge?” Von Salza was immediately on his guard and his hand, like the hands of everyone except the unarmed monks, went to the hilt of his dagger. “Against whom, and for what cause?”

  “On every Russian, rich or poor, alive or dead, who ever slighted me for being old and weak and ugly,” said Baba Yaga. The fawning self-pity in her voice was like poisoned honey. “But on one especially, the one who killed my lovely daughter. Prince Ivan of Khorlov…”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Independent Principality of Koldunov;

  1234 A.D.

  “Mother Wolf?” said Mar’ya Morevna in a way that conveyed much more than just those two words suggested. She stared at the dark woman swaddled in her darker cloak, then at her husband, and there was just a trace of bitterly amused suspicion, a cold hardness like crushed diamonds, glinting in her eyes. “I remember you told me about the wolf, Ivan – but you left out some very important details.”

  “As I said just now, she saved my life.” Then he realized what he was hearing in Mar’ya Morevna’s voice: jealousy, mixed with a little outrage. He felt a spike of annoyance twist in his guts; annoyance with Mar’ya Morevna that she should be so ready to think that he would parade an ex-lover in front of her like this, and with himself for the forgetfulness that had made such an error possible.

  He had indeed told Mar’ya Morevna all about the mother wolf who had aided him against Koshchey the Undying, but he should have explained a little more about her – most particularly, that when she took on human form, that form was astonishingly beautiful. But his mind had been filled first with terror of Koshchey and then by his victory over that old necromancer, so a little forgetfulness could be forgiven.

  It could have been forgiven then, at least; trying such an explanation now would only serve to make things worse.

  The cloaked woman herself saved the situation from descending through its present level of a silly mistake into something more serious, for which Ivan was thankful – though he would also have thanked her to stop smiling in the knowing way that hadn’t improved matters from the start.

  “Highness,” she said, stalking queenly proud past the two sentries
and into the pool of lamplight within the kremlin’s gatehouse, “wolf you named me; wolf I am.”

  She spoke no other words, and made no dramatic gestures with her hands except to draw the belted cloak more comfortably in around her shoulders. A cloak, Ivan noticed as if for the first time though he had known it all along, that was made all of dense black fur. For an instant the light silently collapsed in on itself, dragging a vortex of shadows in from the night beyond the gateway so that the black cloak and the black shadows and the black night all became a single swirl of darkness. The wolf-change wasn’t as tale-tellers described it in their stories: there were no cries of anguish at the reluctant twisting of joint and bone and muscle, no sprouting of coarse fur from unwilling skin. There was just that flicker of light and shadow, a warping of reality instead of a warping of flesh. It lasted whilst a bird’s wing might beat thrice before the light flowed back as if it had never gone. Only the woman in the cloak had gone.

  In her place was the biggest wolf that anyone had ever seen.

  Guard-Captain Fedorov, that taciturn and imperturbable man, crossed himself three times and swore several new and quite original oaths. His two soldiers were less inventive, but made up for that with vehement repetition. Mar’ya Morevna, more accustomed to sorcery than her guards, slowly lifted both her spun-gold eyebrows.

  “Well now,” she said. “A wolf indeed.”

  Prince Ivan stared hard at Mother Wolf, now that she had returned to the shape that he knew best, and put his head on one side. “You’ve put on weight,” he said at last. The wolf twitched her ears back just a bit, and made a low rumbling in her throat.

  “Better manners would have been ‘you’ve grown’, and I can say the same about you.” Her voice, though deeper and growling now where the other had been merely somewhat husky, was still that of the woman in the black cloak, and Ivan grinned as he heard Guard-Captain Fedorov add another few earnest words to the monologue with his personal deity. One of those words was oborotyen, and Mother Wolf turned her head to look thoughtfully at him.