Chicks - Chicks 'N Chained Males Part 6

Marina Frants

"Someone's coming," Baba Yaga announced from the kitchen. "A man on a horse."

Va.s.silisa put aside the stocking she was darning, got up from her chair, and walked over to the window.

She saw no sign of a rider, and heard nothing but the usual forest noises. But if Yaga said someone was coming, then someone undoubtedly was. Va.s.silisa turned away from the window.

"Is this good news or bad news?" she asked.

Yaga looked up form the stewpot she was stirring to aim a gap-toothed grin at her apprentice.

"Depends on what you consider good, doesn't it?"

Va.s.silisa rolled her eyes. "Are we going to talk to him, hide from him, or add him to the stew?"

The last suggestion was only half-serious. In the six months Va.s.silisa had known her, Baba Yaga has shown no taste for human flesh, no matter what the stories said. She did, however, use human bones for some of her more powerful spells, and if their visitor had hostile intentions, he stood a good chance of ending up in pieces in the pantry.

Yaga looked mildly annoyed. "I suppose we'll talk to him. He's bringing a gift."

Once again, Va.s.ssilisa took the statement on faith. Yaga always knew what was going on in the forest.

She could talk to the dead trees, the dry leaves, the bones in the ground. Va.s.silisa was slowly learning to do the same, but it still took her a great deal of painstaking, exhausting, and often smelly ritual to perform spells that Yaga could cast with a thought.

She returned to her sewing, resisting the temptation to pester Yaga with questions. If the rider was bearing a gift, then he was probably going to pet.i.tion for a favor, which meant he was very desperate indeed. Favors from Baba Yaga tended to come at a high, and often unexpected, price. Va.s.silisa had found that out six months before, when she came seeking a way to save her village from the Tatars, and ended up leaving that village forever to become Yaga's apprentice. Not to mention housemaid, gardener, and general errand-girl.

Outside below the windows, a horse snorted nervously and stamped its hooves on the ground. A man's voice called out, "h.e.l.lo? Anyone in the house?"

He repeated his call four times before Yaga poked her head out the kitchen door to glare at Va.s.silisa.

"Well? Are you going to go out and speak to him?"

"I'm pretty sure he's not looking for me," Va.s.silisa grumbled, but she put down her sewing again, and went to fetch the ladder.

She caught a glimpse of the visitor as she opened the door-a tall, broad-shouldered young man in a shabby cloak, riding a chestnut horse. He was looking up at the hut's windows, one hand shielding his eyes against the sun. Va.s.silisa felt terribly self-conscious as she climbed down, presenting shabby skirts and faded stockings to his view. Most of the time, she rather liked living in a hut that stood on chicken legs. It kept most of the forest critters out-legs simply shook off and stomped anything that tried toclimb them. But at times like this, she really wished she could teach the d.a.m.n things tosquat .

By the time she reached solid ground, the rider had ismounted. He stood at the gate, watching Va.s.silisa with a puzzled frown.

"Baba Yaga?" he asked in a tone of shocked disbelief.

Va.s.silisa fought down a snicker. It had to be a bit disconcerting, she supposed, to come searching for a legendary ancient sorceress, and be presented with a freckle-faced young woman in a homemade dress.

"No," she said, and didn't know whether to be amused or insulted by the expression of relief on his face.

"I'm Va.s.silisa, Yaga's apprentice. You can tell me what you need."

He hesitated for a moment, then swept off his hat and bowed to her, just as politely as if she'd been Yaga herself.

"Thank you. My name is Aleksei. I need your-Yaga's-help. I've brought payment . . ." He turned to untie a bulging sack from his saddle. The sack looked heavy, and rattled when he dropped it to the ground. Aleksei dug inside it, and pulled out an oversized gold goblet with a green enamel base and a circle of emeralds around the lip of the bowl. He held it out to Va.s.silisa, who nearly dropped it. She had never held anything made of gold before. The goblet was much heavier than it looked.

"I have more," Aleksei told her earnestly. "As much as you want. You can have this whole bag if Yaga helps me."

Va.s.silisa turned the goblet over in her hands, frowning. She couldn't imagine what they'd do with it. It was much too large and heavy to actually drink from. Sell it, maybe? They'd need to travel all the way to Kiev to find a buyer who could afford such a thing. Va.s.silisa shrugged. It hardly mattered. Knowing Yaga, the price would end up being something else entirely.

"What do you need?" she asked.

Aleksei hesitated again, staring down at the ground and shifting from foot and foot. Finally he opened his cloak to reveal a knee-length coat of chainmail underneath.

"It's this armor," he said.

"What's wrong with it?" It looked like very good armor, well-made and brightly polished, much finer than the rest of Aleksei's clothes.

Aleksei looked at Va.s.silisa with pleading eyes. "I can't get the cursed thing off!"

Vasillisa bit her lip. Shewasn't going to laugh. Aleksei didn't strike her as the brightest person she's ever met but he was, presumably, capable of undressing himself. So there had to be a real problem there.

"Tell me all about it."

Aleksei, it turned out, had discovered an abandoned castle about a week's ride to the north, and gone in to explore it. He had found mice, bats, spiders, dust, and a great deal of treasure lying about, but no people. No living people, anyway. "There was a skeleton on the floor in one of the treasure chambers," Aleksei said. "Buried under a pile of gold. The bones were scorched, and his clothes were all burnt away, but the armor was still bright and shiny. Not even dust had settled on it. I figured ithad to be enchanted, so I . . ."

"So you robbed him."

Aleksei gave her a defensive look. "He didn't need it anymore, did he? I thought it would protect me in battle."

"It didn't protect the previous owner," Va.s.silisa pointed out. Aleksei blinked.

"No, I suppose it didn't. I hadn't thought of that. So can Baba Yaga help me?"

Va.s.silisa tucked the jeweled goblet under her arm and returned to the ladder.

"I'll see what we can do."

"Hmph." Yaga lifted the goblet in her gnarled hands, and tapped one crooked nail against the stem.

"Useless piece of junk. Still, the boy did bring a gift. I guess you'd better help him."

"Me?" Va.s.silisa sputtered. "What am I supposed to do? I don't know how to get that armor off him!"

Yaga fixed her with a narrow-eyed frown, the kind she usually got when Va.s.silisa bungled a spell, or forgot a lesson, or didn't get the dishes clean enough.

"And what do you do when you don't know?"

That was one of the earliest lessons. Va.s.silisa sighed. "You find someone who knows, and ask."

"And who would know, in this case?"

Va.s.silisa opened her mouth to answer, and quickly closed it again. Her first impulse was to saythe wizard who enchanted the armor , but they didn't know who it was, and had no way to find out. She thought about it for a moment.

"The previous owner?"

"Good girl. The man's bones are still in the castle, aren't they? Go and talk to him."

"But-" Va.s.silisa began, then stopped. Why was she arguing? Yaga wasn't asking her to do anything she hadn't done before. Doing it for practice in the warm safety of the hut might be more comfortable than doing it for real, but the process was the same, wasn't it? "All right. I'll go get ready." She headed toward the small closet where she and Yaga kept the dried herbs used in their spells.

"Take the flying mortar!" Yaga called after her. "I can't spare you for two weeks, you know! There's spring cleaning to be done."

"I don't know how you managed before I came along," Va.s.silisa muttered, busily sorting through rows of little jars on the closet shelves. "Which reminds me-what are you going to demand for payment?" "Payment?"

"Well, you're not going to take that silly goblet, are you? As you said, the thing's useless. So what will you take?"

"When you came to me, did I tell you the price in advance?"

"No."

"Then don't ask stupid questions now."

"Are you sure Baba Yaga cannot come herself?" Aleksei asked for what had to be the hundredth time.

"It could be dangerous, after all . . ."

"The castle is abandoned," Va.s.silisa snapped. "You said so yourself. Nothing there but bats and mice and a dead man with no armor. That much, I think I can handle."

"But-"

"She'sbusy! "

It was clear that Aleksei did not think that Va.s.silisa could help him. It was getting to be insulting. All right, so she wasn't a great sorceress who knew everything and could cast spells with a thought. She could do this . . . couldn't she?

Sighing, she hiked up her skirt and climbed into Yaga's mortar-a narrow waist-high bowl carved from a single oak stump-which she'd dragged from its little shed in the back of the garden.

"Hand me that bag, will you?"

Aleksei handed her the tattered sack where she'd packed the herbs she would need for the spell.

Va.s.silisa resisted the urge to dig through it again. She had already gone over it three times. Everything was there. And this endless checking and rechecking would only serve to convince Aleksei that she didn't know what she was doing. Va.s.silisa clutched the sack to her chest and leaned forward as far as she could to make room for Aleksei behind her.

"Climb in," she ordered.

It was a tight squeeze. The mortar really wasn't made for two people. Va.s.silisa wrinkled her nose as Aleksei's chest pressed against her back. He smelled like . . . well, like someone who hadn't taken his armor off for a week. She tried to take shallow breaths as she recited the activating spell on the mortar.

They lifted into the air with a lurch and a wobble, and a startled yelp from Aleksei. Va.s.silisa ignored him, and concentrated her thoughts on guiding their flight. The wind whipped her hair back and lifter her shawl off her shoulders, so that she had to clutch the ends in one hand to keep it on. Sheloved this. All the hours spent cleaning Yaga's dishes and scrubbing Yaga's floors were made worth it by these moments of magic.

The forest rushed by below them in a green blur, flat at first, then sloping upwards as they entered hillier country. Aleksei's arms were wrapped tightly around Va.s.silisa's waist, but she barely remembered hewas there. She almost missed his cry of "There!" but caught herself in time and guided the mortar down.

It was a strange place to build a castle. No towns nearby, not even a village. Just trees. The castle, with its moss-grown walls and crumbling towers, looked as if a giant hand had picked it up somewhere else, and dropped it carelessly in the forest. Va.s.silisa brought the mortar down in the central courtyard with only a slight jolt. She climbed out, and hopped up and down a few times to work the kinks out of her knees.

"All right, Aleksei. Lead the way."

The inside of the castle was dim and musty. Most of the wooden doors had rotted away, and all the windows were broken. The ceiling of was lost in shadows. Va.s.silisa could hear scurrying sounds in the corners. Every now and then, a dark shape fluttered overhead-birds or bats, she couldn't be sure.

It was easy to retrace Aleksei's steps from the footprints he'd left in the dust on his first visit. They walked through wide, echoing corridors, brushing aside the occasional cobweb as they pa.s.sed, until they reached an arched doorway. The door hung at an angle, one hinge rusted all the way through, the other barely holding. It squeaked ominously as Aleksei pushed it open. Va.s.silisa followed him in and froze, staring.

She'd never seen that much wealth in her entire life. She'd never even imagined that much. There were mountains of coin, piled higher than Aleksei's head. There were gems of all colors, strewn about like pebbles. Jeweled belts and necklaces lay tangled in the dust, rings glittered on the stone floor, surrounded by rat droppings and dead bugs.

Vasilisa had never given much thought to possessing great riches, but the sight still held her transfixed for a moment. She imagined herself draped in velvet and brocade, with jeweled slippers on her feet, dancing at the Prince's court in Kiev. She picked up a diamond necklace from the floor and held it to her throat.

The sight of the gems glittering against the faded linen of her dress restored her perspective. She shook her head, and let he necklace fall from her fingers. This wasn't what she came for.

"Show me the bones."

The skeleton lay atop a glittering spill of gold and silver. It must've been there a long time. The bones had faded to a dull white, except for the parts that were scorched black. A dented helmet, tarnished with age, adorned the skull.

"I didn't realize he'd be so long dead." Va.s.silisa knelt at the skeleton's side. Most of the dead man's clothes had been burned to blackened shreds, but a few small tatters remained. She could see a glimmer of gold thread on the brittle fabric, indicating that the dead man had been more than just a wandering peasant. "It'll make the spell harder."

"Can you do it?" Aleksei looked dubious. Va.s.silisa glared at him.

"Of course I can do it!"I think . "Clear me some s.p.a.ce on the floor, will you?"

She poured a handful of tinder into a shallow clay bowl and lit it, nursed the spark to a steady flame, then poured on the herbs from her jars, one pinch at a time. The flame turned yellow, then blue, then green. a bittersweet smell permeated the air. Va.s.silisa closed her eyes, clasped the piece of cloth in herfist, and leaned forward to breathe in the smoke.

Yaga always claimed that this part wasn't necessary. Useless trappings, she said, a prop for the weak-willed. The power in spell came from the caster, not from dead plants and smelly smoke. That was all very well if you were as old as the forest, and could speak to rocks and raise the dead with a thought, but when most of your life had been spent tending a vegetable garden and raising chickens, and magic crept up on you unawares, your will needed a prop. Va.s.silisa took another deep breath, and chanted the spell.

The words floated upwards on wisps of scented smoke. Va.s.silisa's eyes remained closed, but white sparks danced across her vision, like afterimages of lightning. The piece of cloth in her hand felt hot. She let the heat flow through her, and out into the air again, searching for any remnant of the dead man's spirit, demanding that he speak.

"What?!" The voice rang in her head, startling her into gasping in too much smoke all at once. Va.s.silisa fell back, coughing, but kept her eyes closed.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"You're the one who dragged me back from the dead, you tell me!" The voice sounded ill-tempered.

The dead often were. Va.s.silisa's instinct was to apologize, to offer an explanation, but Yaga had warned her not to try. Arguing with the dead was a fruitless task, she said. They had all the time in the world, and would keep you talking until the spell wore off, just for spite. You had to command them, not convince them.

She let more power bleed into her, then sent it after the voice, repeating her question with more insistence.

"Wh.o.a.re you?"

There was a short, resentful silence before the answer drifted into her thoughts like the smoke.

"Ivan Tsarevitch."