Uprooted. Part 16

"The Wood will have that anyway!" I said. "Can't you do something?"

"I'm doing it," Alosha said, and put the sword back into the fire again. She'd done it four times already just while we'd been sitting here with her, which I realized didn't make any sense. I hadn't seen swords made before, but I'd watched the smith at work often enough: we'd all liked to watch as children while he hammered out scythes, and pretend he was making swords; we would pick up sticks and have mock battles around the steaming forge. So I knew you weren't meant to forge a blade over and over, but Alosha took the sword out again and put it back on the anvil, and I realized she was hammering spells into the steel: her lips moved a little while she worked. It was a strange kind of magic, because it wasn't finished in itself; she was catching up a dangling spell, and she left it hanging again before she plunged it once more into the cold water.

The dark blade came out dripping, glazed with water. It had a strange and hungry feeling. When I looked into it I saw a long fall into some deep dry crack in the earth, tumbling away onto sharp rocks. It wasn't like the other enchanted swords, the ones Marek's soldiers had carried; this thing wanted to drink life.

"I've been forging this blade for a century," Alosha said, holding it up. I looked at her, glad to take my eyes away from the thing. "After the Raven died, and Sarkan went to the tower, I began it. There's less iron than spellcraft in it by now. The sword only remembers the shape it once had, and it won't last for longer than a single stroke, but that's all it will need."

She put it back in the forge again, and we watched it sitting in the bath of flames, a long tongue of shadow among them. "The power in the Wood," Kasia said slowly, her eyes on the fire. "Is it something you can kill?"

"This sword can kill anything," Alosha said, and I believed her. "As long as we can make it put out its neck. But for that," she added, "we'll need more than a hundred men."

"We could ask the queen," Kasia said suddenly. I blinked at her. "I know there are lords who owe her fealty on her own-a dozen of them tried to come and pay her homage, while we were locked up together, though the Willow wouldn't let them in. She must have soldiers she could give us, instead of sending them to Rosya."

And she, at least, would surely want the Wood struck down. Even if Marek wouldn't listen to me, or the king, or anyone else in the court, perhaps she would.

- So Kasia and I went down to hover outside the great council-chamber: the queen was there again, a part of the war-council now. The guards would have let me inside: they knew who I was, now. They watched me sidelong out of the corners of their eyes, nervous and interested both, as though I might erupt with more sorcery at any moment, like contagious boils. But I didn't want to go in; I didn't want to get caught up in the arguments of the Magnati and the generals planning how best to murder ten thousand men, and harvest glory while the crops rotted in the fields. I wasn't going to put myself into their hands as another weapon to aim.

So we waited outside and held back against the wall instead while the council came pouring out, a torrent of lords and soldiers. I had thought the queen would come behind them, with servants to help her walk. But she didn't: she came out in the center of the crowd. She was wearing the circlet, Ragostok's circlet, the one he'd been working on. The gold caught the light, and the rubies shone above her golden hair. She wore red silk, too, and all of the courtiers gathered around her, sparrows around a cardinal bird. It was the king who came behind the rest, talking in low voices with Father Ballo and two councilors, an afterthought.

Kasia looked at me. We would have had to shove through the crowd to get to her-brazen, but we could have done it; Kasia could have made a way for us. But the queen looked so different. The stiffness seemed to have faded, and her silence. She was nodding to the lords around her, she was smiling; she was one of them again, one of the actors moving on the stage, as graceful as any of them. I didn't move. She glanced aside for a moment, almost towards us. I didn't try to catch her eye; instead I caught Kasia's arm, and pressed her farther back into the wall with me. Something held me like the instinct of a mouse in a hole, hearing the breath of the owl's wing overhead.

The guards fell in after the court with last looks at me; the hallway stood empty. I was trembling. "Nieshka," Kasia said. "What is it?"

"I've made a mistake," I said. I didn't know just what, but I'd done something wrong; I felt the dreadful certainty of it sinking down through me, like watching a penny falling away down a deep well. "I've made a mistake."

- Kasia followed me through the hallways, the narrow stairs, almost running by the end, back to my small room. She was watching me, worried, while I shut the door hard behind us and leaned against it, like a child hiding. "Was it the queen?" Kasia said.

I looked at her standing in the middle of my room, firelight golden on her skin and through her hair, and for one horrible moment she was a stranger wearing Kasia's face: for one moment I'd brought the dark in with me. I whirled away from her to the table. I'd brought a few branches of pine into my bedroom, to have them nearby. I took a handful of needles and burned them on the hearth and breathed in the smoke, the sharp bitter smell, and I whispered my cleansing spell. The strangeness faded. Kasia was sitting on the bed watching me, unhappy. I looked up at her miserably: she'd seen suspicion in my eyes.

"It's no more than I've thought myself," she said. "Nieshka, I should-maybe the queen, maybe both of us, should be-" Her voice shook.

"No!" I said. "No." But I didn't know what to do. I sat on the hearth, panting, afraid, and then I turned abruptly to the fire, cupping my hands, and I called up my old practice illusion, the small and determinedly th.o.r.n.y rose, the vining branches of the rosebush climbing sluggishly over the sides of the fire-screen. Slowly, singing, I gave it perfume, and a handful of humming bees, and leaves curling at the edges with ladybugs hiding; and then I made Sarkan on the other side of it. I called up his hands beneath mine: the long spindly careful fingers, the smooth-rubbed pen calluses, the heat of his skin radiating; and he took shape on the hearth, sitting beside me, and we were sitting in his library, too.

I was singing my short illusion spell back and forth, feeding a steady silver thread of magic to it. But it wasn't like the heart-tree had been, the day before. I was looking at his face, his frown, his dark eyes scowling at me, but it wasn't really him. It wasn't just an illusion that I needed, not just the image of him or even a smell, or a sound, I realized. That wasn't why the heart-tree had lived, down in that throne room. It had grown out of my heart, out of fear and memory and the churning of horror in my belly.

The rose was cupped in my hands. I looked at Sarkan on the other side of the petals, and let myself feel his hands cupped around mine, the places where his fingertips just barely brushed against my skin and where the heels of my palms rested in his. I let myself remember the alarming heat of his mouth, the crush of his silk and lace between our bodies, his whole length against me. And I let myself think about my anger, about everything I'd learned, about his secrets and everything he'd hidden; I let go of the rose and gripped the edges of his coat to shake him, to shout at him, to kiss him- And then he blinked and looked at me, and there was fire glowing somewhere behind him. His cheek was grimy with soot, flecks of ash in his hair, and his eyes were reddened; the fire on the hearth crackled, and it was the distant crackle of fire in the trees. "Well?" he demanded, hoa.r.s.e and irritated, and it was him. "We can't do this for long, whatever you are doing; I can't have my attention divided."

My hands clenched on the fabric: I felt st.i.tches going ragged and flecks of stinging ash on my hands, ash in my nostrils, ash in my mouth. "What's happening?"

"The Wood's trying to take Zatochek," he said. "We've been burning it back every day, but we've lost a mile of ground already. Vladimir has sent what soldiers he could spare from the Yellow Marshes, but it's not enough. Is the king sending any men?"

"No," I said. "He's-they're starting another war with Rosya. The queen said Vasily of Rosya gave her to the Wood."

"The queen spoke?" he said sharply, and I felt that same uneasy drumbeat of fear rise up in my throat again.

"But the Falcon put a spell of seeing on her," I said, arguing with myself as much as him. "They tried her with Jadwiga's shawl. There wasn't anything in her. There wasn't a trace, none of them could see any shadow-"

"Corruption isn't the only tool the Wood has," Sarkan said. "Ordinary torment can break a person just as well. It might have let her go deliberately, broken to its service but untainted to any magical sight. Or it might have planted something on her instead, or nearby. A fruit, a seed-"

He stopped and turned his head, seeing something I couldn't. He said sharply, "Let go!" and jerked his magic loose; I fell backwards off the hearth and struck against the floor, jarred painfully. The rosebush crumbled to ash on the hearth and vanished, and he was gone with it.

Kasia sprang to catch me, but I was already scrambling to my feet. A fruit, a seed. His words had sparked fear in me. "The bestiary," I said. "Ballo was going to try to purify it-" I was still dizzy, but I turned and ran from the room, urgency rising in me. Ballo had been going to tell the king about the book. Kasia ran beside me, steadying my first wobbly steps.

The screaming reached us as we plunged down the first narrow servants' staircase. Too late, too late, my feet told me as they slapped against the stone. I couldn't tell where the screams came from: they were far away and echoing strangely through the castle hallways. I ran in the direction of the Charovnikov, past two staring maids who'd shrunk back against the walls, crumpling the folded linens in their arms. Kasia and I wheeled to go down the second staircase to the ground level just as a white burst of fire crackled below, throwing sharp-edged shadows against the walls.

The blinding light faded, and then I saw Solya go flying across the mouth of the stairwell, smashing into a wall with a wet-sack noise. We scrambled down and saw him sprawled up against the opposite wall, not moving, his eyes open and dazed, blood running from his nose and mouth, and b.l.o.o.d.y shallow slashes dragged across his chest.

The thing that crawled out of the corridor to the Charovnikov nearly filled the s.p.a.ce from floor to ceiling. It was less a beast than a horrible conglomeration of parts: a head like a monstrous dog, one enormous eye in the middle of its forehead and the snout full of jagged sharp edges that looked like knives instead of teeth. Six heavy-muscled legs with clawed lion's feet sprouted from its swollen body, all of it armored in scales like a serpent. It roared and came rushing towards us so quickly I almost couldn't think to move. Kasia seized me and dragged me back up the stairs, and the thing doubled on itself and thrust its head up through the opening of the stairwell, snapping and biting and howling, a green froth boiling out of its mouth. I shouted, "Polzhyt!" stamping its head away, and it shrieked and jerked back into the hallway as a spurt of fire burst up from the stairs and scorched across its muzzle.

Two heavy bolts flew into its side with solid, meaty thumps: it twisted, snarling. Behind it, Marek threw aside a crossbow; a terrified gawky young equerry at his side had pulled a spear down off the wall for him and was clutching it, gaping at the monster; he barely remembered to let go as Marek s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of his hands. "Go raise the guard!" he shouted at the boy, who flinched and ran. Marek jabbed the spear at the monster's head.

The doors to a chamber hung crazily open behind him, white and black flagstones splattered with blood and three men sprawled dead, n.o.bles in slashed clothes. The white, frightened face of an old man stared out from beneath the table in the room: the palace secretary. Two palace guards lay dead farther back along the hallway, as if the monster had come bounding from deeper inside the castle and had smashed open the doors to get at the men inside.

Or perhaps to get at one man, in particular: it snarled at the poking spear, but then it turned away from Marek; it swung its heavy head around, teeth baring, deliberate, towards Solya. He was staring at the ceiling still, his eyes dazed, his fingers slowly scrabbling over the stone floor as though trying to find a grip on the world.

Before the thing could pounce, Kasia flung herself past me in one enormous leap down the stairs, stumbling and thudding into the wall and righting herself. She grabbed another spear off the wall and pushed it into the beast's face. The dog-thing snapped at the spear's haft, then bellowed: Marek had sunk his spear into its flanks. There were boots, shouts coming, more guards running and the cathedral bells ringing suddenly in warning; the page had raised the alarm.

I saw all of those things, and could say afterwards that they happened, but I didn't feel them happening in the moment. There was only the hot stinking breath of the monster coming up the staircase, and blood, and my heart jumping; and knowing I had to do something. The beast howled and turned back to Kasia and Solya, and I stood up on the stairs. The bells were ringing and ringing. I heard them above my head, where a high window looked out from the stairwell onto a narrow slice of sky, the bright pearl-grey haze of a cloudy summer day.

I stretched up my hand and called, "Kalmoz!" Outside the clouds squeezed together into a dark knot like a sponge, a cloudburst that blew water in spattering on me, and a bolt of lightning cracked in through the window and jumped into my hands like a bright hissing snake. I clutched it, blinded, white light and a high singing whine all around me; I couldn't breathe. I flung it down the stairs towards the beast. Thunder roared around me and I went flying back, sprawling painfully across the landing, smoke and a bitter sharp smell crackling.

I lay flat, shaking all over, tears running out of my eyes. My hands were stinging and painful, and smoke was coming off them like morning fog. I couldn't hear anything. When my eyes cleared, the two maids were bending over me, terrified, their mouths moving soundlessly. Their hands spoke for them, gentle, helping me up. I staggered up to my feet. At the foot of the stairs, Marek and three guards were at the monster's head, prodding it warily. It lay smoking and still, a blasted outline charred black against the walls around its body. "Put a spear in its eye to be sure," Marek said, and one of the guards thrust his in deep into the one round eye, already milky. The body didn't twitch.

I limped down the stairs, one hand on the wall, and sank shakily down on the steps above its head. Kasia was helping Solya to his feet; he put the back of his hand to his face and wiped away the maze of blood over his mouth, panting, staring down at the beast.

"What the h.e.l.l is that thing?" Marek demanded. It looked even more unnatural, dead: limbs that didn't fit with one another hanging askew from the body, as if some mad seamstress had sewn together bits of different dolls.

I stared at it from above, the dog-muzzle shape, the sprawled loose legs, the thick serpent's body, and a memory slowly crept in, a picture I'd seen yesterday, out of the corner of my eye, trying not to read. "A tsoglav," I said. I stood up again, too fast, and had to catch myself on the wall. "It's a tsoglav."

"What?" Solya said, looking up at me. "What is a-"

"It's from the bestiary!" I said. "We have to find Father Ballo-" I stopped and looked at the beast, the one last filmy staring eye, and suddenly I knew we weren't going to find him. "We have to find the book," I whispered.

I was swaying and sick. I scrambled and half-fell over the body getting into the hall. Marek caught my arm and held me up, and with the guards holding spears ready we went down to the Charovnikov. The great wooden doors were hanging askew over the opening, splintered, bloodstained. Marek tipped me against the wall like a wobbly ladder, then jerked a head to one of the guardsmen: together they seized one of the heavy broken doors and lifted it out of the way.

The library was a ruin, lamps broken, tables overturned and smashed, only a few dim lights shining. Bookcases lay toppled over on heaps of the volumes they had held, disemboweled. In the center of the room, the ma.s.sive stone table had cracked down the middle both ways and fallen in on itself. The bestiary lay open in the very center atop stone dust and rubble, one last lamp shining down on the unmarred pages. There were three bodies scattered on the floor around it, broken and discarded, mostly lost in the shadows, but next to me Marek went deeply and utterly still; halted.

And then he sprang forward, shouting, "Send for the Willow! Send for-" sliding to his knees next to the farthest body; he stopped as he turned it over and the light fell on the man's face: on the king's face.

The king was dead.

Chapter 23.

There were people everywhere shouting: guards, servants, ministers, physicians, all crowding around the body of the king as close as they could get. Marek had set the three guards to watch him and vanished. I was pushed up to the side of the room like flotsam on the tide, my eyes closing as I sagged against a bookcase. Kasia pushed through to my side. "Nieshka, what should I do?" she asked me, helping me to sit on a footstool.

I said, "Go and get Alosha," instinctively wanting someone who would know what to do.

It was a lucky impulse. One of Ballo's a.s.sistants had survived: he'd fled and pulled himself up into the stone chimney of the library's great fireplace to escape. A guard noticed the claw marks on the hearth and the ashes of the fire all raked out over the floor, and they found him still up there, shaking and terrified. They brought him out and gave him a drink, and then he stood up and pointed at me and blurted, "It was her! She was the one who found it!"

I was dizzy and ill and still shaking with thunder. They all began shouting at me. I tried to tell them about the book, how it had been hiding in the library all this time; but they wanted someone to blame more than they wanted someone to explain. The smell of pine needles came into my nostrils. Two guards seized me by the arms, and I think they would have dragged me to the dungeons in a moment, or worse: someone said, "She's a witch! If we let her get her strength back again-"

Alosha made them stop: she came into the room and clapped her hands three times, each clap making a noise like a whole troop of men stamping. Everyone quieted long enough to listen to her. "Put her down in that chair and stop behaving like fools," she said. "Take hold of Jakub instead. He was here in the middle of it. Didn't any of you have the wits to suspect he'd been touched with corruption, too?"

She had authority: they all knew her, especially the guards, who went as stiff and formal as if she were a general. They let go of me and caught poor protesting Jakub instead; they dragged him up to Alosha still bleating, "But she did! Father Ballo said she found the book-"

"Be quiet," Alosha said, taking out her dagger. "Hold his wrist," she told one of the guards, and had them pin the apprentice's arm to a table by the wrist, palm up. She muttered a spell over it and nicked his elbow, then held the blade beside the bleeding cut. He squirmed and struggled in their grip, moaning, and then thin black wisps of smoke came seeping out with the blood, and rose to catch on the glowing blade. She rotated the dagger slowly, collecting up the wisps like thread on a bobbin until the smoke stopped coming. Alosha held the dagger up and looked at it with narrowed eyes, said, "Hulvad elolveta," and blew on it three times: the blade grew brighter and brighter with every breath, glowing hot, and the smoke burned off with a smell of sulfur.

The room had emptied considerably by the time she was done, and everyone left had backed away to the walls, except the pale unhappy guards still holding the apprentice. "All right, give him some bandages. Stop shouting, Jakub," she said. "I was there when she found it, you idiot: the book was here in our own library for years, lurking like a rotting apple. Ballo was going to purge it. What happened?"

Jakub didn't know: he'd been sent to fetch supplies. The king hadn't been there when he'd left; when he'd come back, carrying more salt and herbs, the king and his guards had been standing by the podium with blank faces, and Ballo was reading the book aloud, already changing: clawed legs coming from beneath his robe, and two more sprouting from his sides, tearing their way out, his face lengthening into a snout, the words still coming even as they garbled and choked in his throat- Jakub's voice rose higher and higher as he spoke, until it broke and stopped. His hands were shaking.

Alosha poured more nalevka into a gla.s.s for him to drink. "It's stronger than we thought," she said. "We have to burn it at once."

I struggled up off my footstool, but Alosha shook her head at me. "You're overspent. Go sit on the hearth, and keep watch on me: don't try to do anything unless you see it's taking me."

The book still lay placidly on the floor between the shattered pieces of the stone table, illuminated and innocent. Alosha took a pair of gauntlets from one of the guards and picked it up. She took it to the hearth and called fire: "Polzhyt, polzhyt mollin, polzhyt talo," and on further from there, a long incantation, and the dull ashes in the hearth roared up like the blaze of her forge. The fire licked at the pages and gummed them, but the book only flung itself open in the fire and its pages ruffled like flags in a high wind, snapping, pictures of beasts trying to catch the eye, illuminated with firelight behind them.

"Get back!" Alosha said sharply to the guards: a few of them had been about to take a step closer, their eyes vague and caught. She reflected firelight into their faces from the flat of her dagger, and they blinked and then startled back, pale and afraid.

Alosha watched with a wary eye until they moved farther away, then turned back and kept chanting her fire spell, over and over, her arms spread wide to hold the fire in. But the book still hissed and spat on the hearth like wet green wood, refusing to catch; the fresh smell of spring leaves crept into the room, and I could see veins standing out on Alosha's neck, strain showing in her face. She had her eyes fixed on the mantelpiece, but they kept drifting downwards towards the glowing pages. Each time, she pressed her thumb against the edge of her dagger. Blood dripped. She lifted her gaze back up.

Her voice was going hoa.r.s.e. A handful of orange sparks landed on the carpet and smoldered. Sitting tired on the footstool, I looked at them and slowly I began to hum the old song about the spark on the hearth, telling its long stories: Once there was a golden princess, loved a simple player; the king gave them a splendid wedding, and the story ends there! Once there was old Baba Jaga, house made out of b.u.t.ter; and in that house so many wonders-tsk! The spark is gone now. Gone, taking the story with it. I sang it once through softly and said, "Kikra, kikra," and then sang it again. The flying sparks began to drop onto the pages like rain, each one darkening a tiny spot before they went out. They fell in glowing showers, and when they fell in cl.u.s.ters, thin plumes of smoke went up.

Alosha slowed and stopped. The fire was catching at last. The pages were curling in on themselves at the edges like small animals huddling to die, with a burnt-sugar smell of sap in the fire. Kasia took my arm gently, and we backed away from the fire while it slowly ate the book up like someone forcing herself to eat stale bread.

- "How did this bestiary come to your hands?" one minister bellowed at me, seconded by half a dozen more. "Why was the king there?" The council chamber was full of n.o.bles shouting at me, at Alosha, at one another, afraid, demanding answers that weren't to be had. Half of them still suspected me of having set a trap for the king, and talked of throwing me in the dungeon; some others decided, on no evidence at all, that shivering Jakub was a Rosyan agent who'd lured the king to the library and tricked Father Ballo into reading the book. He began to weep and make protests, but I didn't have the strength to defend myself against them. My mouth stretched into an involuntary yawn instead, and made them angrier.

I didn't mean to be disrespectful, I just couldn't help it. I couldn't get enough air. I couldn't think. My hands were still stinging with lightning and my nose was full of smoke, of burning paper. None of it seemed real to me yet. The king dead, Father Ballo dead. I had seen them barely an hour ago, walking away from the war-conference, whole and healthy. I remembered the moment, too vividly: the small worried crease in Father Ballo's forehead; the king's blue boots.

In the library, Alosha had done a purging spell over the king's body, then the priests had carried him away to the cathedral for vigil, wrapped hastily in a cloth. The boots had been sticking out of the end of the bundle.

The Magnati kept shouting at me. It didn't help that I felt I was to blame. I'd known something was wrong. If I'd only been quicker, if I'd only burned the book myself when I first found it. I put my stinging hands over my face.

But Marek stood up next to me and shouted the n.o.bles down with the authority of the b.l.o.o.d.y spear he was still holding. He slammed it down on the council table in front of them. "She slew the beast when it might have killed Solya and another dozen men besides," he said. "We don't have time for this sort of idiocy. We march on the Rydva in three days' time!"

"We march nowhere without the king's word!" one of the ministers dared to shout back. Lucky for him, he was across the table and out of arm's reach: even so he shrank back from Marek leaning across the table, mailed hand clenched into a fist, rage illuminating him with righteous wrath.

"He's not wrong," Alosha said sharply, putting a hand down in front of Marek, and making him straighten up to face her. "This is no time to be starting a war."

Half of the Magnati along the table were snarling and clawing at each other; blaming Rosya, blaming me, even blaming poor Father Ballo. The throne stood empty at the head of the table. Crown Prince Sigmund sat to the right of it. His hands were clenched around each other into a single joined fist. He stared at it without speaking while the shouting went on. The queen sat on the left. She still wore Ragostok's golden circlet, above the smooth shining satin of her black gown. I noticed dully that she was reading a letter: a messenger was standing by her elbow, with an empty dispatch bag and an uncertain face. He'd come into the room just then, I suppose.

The queen stood up. "My lords." Heads turned to look at her. She held up the letter, a short folded piece of paper; she'd broken the red seal. "A Rosyan army has been sighted coming for the Rydva: they will be there in the morning."

No one let out a word.

"We must put aside our mourning and our anger," she said. I stared up at her: the very portrait of a queen, proud, defiant, her chin raised; her voice rang clearly in the stone hall. "This is no hour for Polnya to show weakness." She turned to the crown prince: his face was turned up towards her just like mine, startled and open as a child's, his mouth loosely parted over words that weren't coming. "Sigmund, they have only sent four companies. If you gather the troops already mustering outside the city and ride at once, you will have the advantage in numbers."

"I should be the one who-!" Marek said, rousing to protest, but Queen Hanna held up her hand, and he stopped.

"Prince Marek will stay here and secure the capital with the royal guard, gathering the additional levies that are coming in," she said, turning back to the court. "He will be guided by the council's advice and, I hope, my own. Surely there is nothing else to be done?"

The crown prince stood. "We will do as the queen proposes," he said. Marek's cheeks were purpling with frustration, but he blew out a breath and said sourly, "Very well."

Just that quickly, everything seemed decided. The ministers began at once to take themselves off busily in every direction, glad of order restored. There wasn't a moment to protest, a moment to suggest any other course; there wasn't a chance to stop it.

I stood up. "No," I said, "wait," but no one was listening. I reached for the last dregs of my magic, to make my voice louder, to make them turn back. "Wait," I tried to say, and the room swam away into black around me.

- I woke up in my room and sat straight up in one jerk, all the hair standing on my arms and my throat burning: Kasia was sitting on the foot of my bed, and the Willow was straightening up away from me with a thin, disapproving expression on her face, a potion-bottle in her hand. I didn't remember how I'd got there; I looked out the window, confused; the sun had moved.

"You fell down in the council-room," Kasia said. "I couldn't stir you."

"You were overspent," the Willow said. "No, don't try to rise. You'd better stay just where you are, and don't try to use magic again for at least a week. It's a cup that needs to be refilled, not an endless stream."

"But the queen!" I blurted. "The Wood-"

"Ignore me if you like and spend your last dregs and die, I shan't have anything to say about it," the Willow said, dismissive. I didn't know how Kasia had persuaded her to come and see to me, but from the cold look they exchanged as the Willow swept past her and out the door, I didn't think it had been very gently.

I knuckled my eyes and lay there in the pillows. The potion the Willow had given me was a churning, glowing warmth in my belly, like I'd eaten something with too many hot peppers in it.

"Alosha told me to get the Willow to look at you," Kasia said, still leaning worried over me. "She said she was going to stop the crown prince from going."

I gathered my strength and struggled up, grabbing for Kasia's hands. The muscles of my stomach were aching and weak. But I couldn't keep to my bed right now, whether I could use magic or not. A heaviness lingered in the air of the castle, that terrible pressure. The Wood was still here, somehow. The Wood hadn't finished with us yet. "We have to find her."

- The guards at the crown prince's rooms were on high alert; they half-wanted to bar us coming in, but I called out, "Alosha!" and when she put her head out and spoke to them, they let us into the skelter of packing under way. The crown prince wasn't in full armor yet, but he had on his greaves and a mail shirt, and he had a hand on his son's shoulder. His wife, Princess Malgorzhata, stood with him holding the little girl in her arms. The boy had a sword-a real sword with an edge, made small enough for him to hold. He wasn't seven years old. I would have given money that a child that young would cut off a finger within a day-his or someone else's-but he held it as expertly as any soldier. He was presenting it across his palms to his father with an anxious, upturned face. "I won't be any trouble," he said.

"You have to stay and look after Marisha," the prince said, stroking the boy's head. He looked at the princess; her face was sober. He didn't kiss her, but he kissed her hand. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"I'm thinking of taking the children to Gidna once the funeral is over," the princess said: I knew vaguely it was the name of the city she was from, the ocean port the marriage had opened to Polnya. "The sea air will be healthy for them, and my parents haven't seen Marisha since her christening." From the words, you would have thought she'd just had the idea a moment ago, but as she said them, they sounded rehea.r.s.ed.

"I don't want to go to Gidna!" the boy said. "Papa-"

"Enough, Stashek," the prince said. "Whatever you think best," he told the princess, and turned to Alosha. "Will you put a blessing on my sword?"

"I'd rather not," she said grimly. "Why are you lending yourself to this? After we spoke yesterday-"

"Yesterday my father was alive," Prince Sigmund said. "Today he's dead. What do you think is going to happen when the Magnati vote on the succession, if I let Marek go and he destroys this Rosyan army for us?"

"So send a general," Alosha said, but she wasn't really arguing; I could tell she was only saying it while she searched for another "I can't," he said. "If I don't ride out at the head of this army, Marek will. Do you think there's any general I could appoint who would stand in the way of the hero of Polnya right now? The whole country is ringing with his song."

"Only a fool would put Marek on the throne instead of you," Alosha said.