Nine Layers of Sky (27 page)

Six

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

The vehicle stopped at the head of a pass, close to a narrow opening in the rocks. Sunlight filtered down, striking the motes of dust cast up by the vehicle’s power supply and throwing a haze over the fierce blue of the sky.

“Stay here,” Anikova said. She climbed out of the car and strode up to the waiting team as Ilya peered through the window. Anikova’s men were dressed in dun fatigues; they reminded him of the soldier he had once been in Afghanistan. But their weapons were like nothing he had seen before. They carried guns that resembled Anikova’s, but they were gathered around a device on which sat a thing like an immense shell. It gleamed in the sunlight, like dark polished bronze, and it was surrounded by a cradle of wires. It reminded Ilya of a much larger version of the distorter coil.

“What is that thing?” Ilya said to the Mechvor.

“That? It is a Concet—a dream-net.”

“And what does a dream-net do?”

“Stops people in their tracks,” the Mechvor said with unaccustomed ruthlessness.

“Are they planning to use that against the horse clan? Is the plan to kill them? Capture them? Neither?”

“Things here do not work in the way that you are used to. We cannot simply kill the Warrior and retrieve the coil. The Warrior cannot be killed.”

For the first time, Ilya felt a fleeting sympathy for the being.

“The dream-net will be used to disorient the Warrior, prevent it from activating the coil—if, indeed, it is able to do so. We do not want to take that risk,” the Mechvor went on.

“How are you planning to retrieve the coil?”

“We won’t. You will.”

Ilya stared at her. “And what makes you think I’ll help you? Or even that I can?”

“The coil responds to you,” Kitai said.

“If it does, I am not aware of it.”

“Stop stalling,” the Mechvor told him. “I could see the truth in your face when we discussed the matter. I did not even need to reach into your mind.”

For the first time, Ilya saw the gentle façade fall completely away, leaving arrogance and something else, something hungrier and more ancient, that he did not want to understand.

“Anikova has asked me to make a bargain with you,” Kitai went on. “Retrieve the coil for us, and we’ll help save Elena.”

“Oh?” He did not believe her. “And then?”

“We keep the coil. You will be free to go—return to Earth, if that’s what you want, or to remain here in Byelovodye.”

Ilya smiled. “You won’t allow that, will you?”

Kitai’s rueful serenity was back. “Perhaps not. But you will be free. I give you my word.”

Elena,
he thought. He was certain that the Mechvor’s word was worth nothing, but he kept his face blank and his thoughts in the back of his mind. He had the beginnings of a plan.

“Just try to keep your mind as empty as possible,” the Mechvor told him, with more than a trace of irony. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to activate the coil by accident.”

“Wouldn’t we just end up back on the Kyrgyz border?”

“Or between.” The Mechvor’s face was pinched. He remembered Manas commenting on the dangers of traveling between the worlds. Ilya was about to ask the Mechvor about this when Anikova returned to the vehicle.

“Out. Go and join the rest of the team. Do whatever they tell you.”

“Where will you be?”

She gestured toward the rocks. “Up there, with Kitai.”

Ilya watched as the vehicle glided to a ledge on the cliff face, then went to join Anikova’s team. The team— three men, two women—looked at him with neutral acceptance. He stood a short distance from the dream-net, watching and waiting. The dream-net was moved into position, gliding over the loose earth, to rest behind a bank of rocks. From this angle, it looked like an immense fossil: something dug from the heart of the earth and burnished. Ilya could see no sign of any external workings, nor, aside from the wires, any indication as to why the Mechvor had called it a net. It hovered over the ground, inscrutable, impenetrable, and somehow alien.

“Here,” someone said. “You’ll need one of these.”

He was handed a square of what appeared to be black cloth. When he examined it, he saw that it was made of a fine mesh, and as he shifted it in his hands it became alternatively very heavy and extremely light, depending on the way he held it.

“What do I do with it?” he asked.

“Put it over your head.”

Ilya, frowning, did so, and immediately the mesh clung to his scalp, contracting inward. He thought of the Kazakh torture: the bag of skin tightening in the sun, and fought back claustrophobia.

Since he had gotten out of the vehicle, Ilya had been listening, but the surrounding district seemed quiet enough. There were faint traces of sound, occasional snatches of conversation, but nothing that he could pin a warning on. He found that he was conscious of a perverse desire to pull his weight in this new world, convince Anikova that he could be a part of it, but he could not help feeling that here, too, he was an anachronism, not part of the new dreams of Russia. At least this line of thought was helping him to avoid worries about Elena.

Then, all at once, a voice spoke into his ear. He whipped round, but no one was there. It was the coil.

I am coming.

It was followed by a familiar, ominous sound: the beat of hooves. He turned to the nearest person, a girl with a wide Slavic face beneath her mesh helmet.

“They’re on their way,” he said.

“I didn’t hear anything—” Then she gave him a sudden appraising glance. She spoke rapidly into a device at her collar. Ilya heard Anikova speaking in response.

“We can see them now. They’re coming down the pass. Aim for the woman, the blonde.”

“No,” Ilya said, but the word was drowned in the sound of the horde. Hoofbeats and cries echoed from the walls of the canyon. The girl touched a sequence of switches beneath the dream-net, which began to emit a distant, disquieting hum. Ilya felt as though it was reverberating through his bones; he thought of the sound that had accompanied Manas. Ilya’s vision blurred. Through a haze of dust, he saw the horsemen approaching.

The dream-net had become both the most solid thing in the world, and an insubstantial confection of spun glass and frosted wire. To Ilya, it was as though he was standing in two places at the same time, seeing the dream-net from different angles. Then that double perspective itself altered to transform the world into a multitude of viewpoints. Ilya watched, frozen, as an edifice began to build itself up around the dream-net: a towering palace of white stone. A golden cupola gleamed briefly at its pinnacle, surmounted by the double Russian cross, followed by the crescent moon of Islam and a single five-pointed star. Then it was gone, no more than a sequence of shadows upon the air.

“Muromyets! Go! Go now!” Anikova’s voice cut through the confusion.

Ilya took a faltering step forward. The people around him were blurred and unreal, ghosts in snow, as the air broke up into a static haze. The dream-net was changing the channel of reality, taking it to the limits of broadcast vision. Ilya glimpsed nightmares in the whirling world, things from the depths of Russia’s stories:
Leshy
with its greenleaf hair and root-knotted hands, at once no bigger than a bird and yet pine-tree high. He saw
Domovoi,
the ancient spirit of the house.
Bannik
running on her hen-clawed feet. Old myths for new: Chernobyl’s radiation ghosts marched by; chained Chechen dead shuffled forward. He caught a brief image of a cosmonaut, hand raised to an invisible crowd, and he thought with a stab of jealousy and loss of Elena’s Yuri. Soldiers, workers, a woman with a sheaf of grain . . . Then the static was scattering like hail as the Golden Warrior’s white mare charged through. There was no chance of finding the coil; he wondered how Kitai had even expected it. He was looking for Elena.

He turned to see her by his side, hands held out, and then she was gone, snatched away with such speed that he was not sure if she had ever been there at all. He cried out and found Anikova’s vehicle hovering at his elbow. Its top was down. Anikova stood with legs braced apart, squinting down the sights of her weapon. But the white mare leaped forward, knocking the dream-net to one side so that it spun and tottered. A plethora of realities folded in upon one another. Ilya stood knee-deep in grass, underneath a cherry tree, but the blossom was falling first as snow, then as a white roar of water, thundering down out of the rocks to Baikal Lake, then as a flock of swans heading into the setting sun. A single feather touched Ilya’s cheek, cold as a kiss.

But one thing remained constant: the
rusalki,
more than Ilya had seen at any one time before. They appeared as women, gracious and beautiful, then as creatures with sharp claws and teeth, then something stranger that Ilya’s mind could not grasp. They stood in a circle, which gradually began to move toward the Warrior. Ilya saw Elena stir across the saddlebow. Her hair streamed behind her as the mare leaped, her mouth gaping. But midflight, midair, the Warrior, its mount, and Elena were as still as a Russian miniature, captured and frozen. The
rusalki
closed in, swift as wolves. Trapped in dreams, Ilya felt the presence of the coil. It sang out to him, connecting.

With a sound that reverberated from the walls of the canyon, the dream-net fell. Realities split. The ground car was thrown onto its side. Ilya dropped to the ground, down through earth and air and stone.

He landed on a tarmac forecourt, with a jolt that knocked the air from his lungs. Beside him, a woman cried out. Blindly, Ilya reached for her hand. Relief flooded through him, until he looked up and saw that it was not Elena who had tumbled down by his side. It was the Mechvor.

Seven

BYELOVODYE, N.E. 80

Elena caught sight of the rusalki for only a few moments, but it was enough to snatch her back to the memory of the thing in the park, swarming down the rough pine bark toward her, and the attack in the market. The mare trembled beneath her, muscles straining with the attempt to move. The
rusalki
glided forward in a menacing crescent. Elena thought of claws reaching for her throat and, with a great heave, threw aside the Warrior’s restraining arm and fell from the mare’s back, clutching her bag.

“Get me out of here!” She directed all her longing toward the coil in the bag. She thought of space, of freedom, of flight.

There was a singing pause.

“Please! Help me . . .”

The walls of the canyon, the horse clan riding behind, the Warrior perched on the bunched, leaping back of the mare—everything slid softly past her, leaving a stir of air in its wake, and was gone. The sky was dark. There were no stars. Elena sank quietly down on the ground and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, it was daylight. She lay curled in the middle of a forest, like a child in a fairy tale. She could see the sky through the branches of the pines and it was once again that darker, stranger blue. She reached for Ilya, but he was not there. She tried to stifle the fright and panic into something more manageable, but then she remembered the coil. Frantically, she opened her bag and there it was, wrapped in leather. It had heard her. It had saved her.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

Rising to her feet, Elena looked about her, but there was no one in sight. There was still snow at the foot of the deeper pines, but it was eroding into pale patches and the new grass was pushing through. There were catkins on a nearby grove of birch and the air was mild, fragrant with woodsmoke. And that meant there was a fire not far away. A curl of smoke snaked above the trees. Elena began walking toward it.

She had not gone far when her skin prickled. She turned and saw nothing, but the conviction that something was following her grew. She continued to walk, wheeling around at odd intervals. The forest was quiet and still, and full of eyes. She turned again, and this time there was a rustle in the undergrowth and a hare moved from beneath the brambles. It was still in its winter white; its eyes were huge and dark.

“Hello,” Elena said, enchanted. The hare looked at her for a moment, then bounded away. She walked on and minutes later, came to the house.

It stood in a clearing in the forest: a traditional Siberian
izba,
a cabin made of logs, with a pipe for a chimney.

“Dobreden?”
Elena called. There was no reply, but she could hear movement from the back of the
izba.
She walked around it, to find a narrow pen ending in a series of burrows. She frowned. It looked as though someone was keeping rabbits, but a sheaf of corn had been placed in the middle of the pen, which indicated chickens. Then she saw that two eyes, bright as hot coals, were looking at her from the depths of one of the burrows. Elena stood very still. A long beak emerged from the burrow, followed by a narrow, skeletal head. The creature had two little hands, folded across its breast: she saw delicate fingers, bird-boned, half-buried in a mass of downy chestnut feathers. The creature hopped forward on long, thin feet and looked at her with its head on one side. She recognized a
kikimura.

“Who are you?” said a voice behind her.

Elena, startled, stumbled back against the railing of the pen. The
kikimura,
equally alarmed, bolted for its burrow. There was a girl standing in front of her, holding a bucket. She looked entirely ordinary, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, long red hair in a ponytail, a wide Siberian face, and the tilted eyes of Evenk ancestry. She wore jeans and a rubber apron.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s all right. You made me jump, that’s all.” Elena’s heart was pounding, but underneath that was relief. The girl spoke excellent Russian. If she was still in Byelovodye—and given the presence of the
kikimura,
she did not see where else it could be—then possibly she was in the north, away from the Warrior and the horse clans.

“Kikimura,”
she said. She remembered the old illustrations in the books of her childhood. “I thought they were hen spirits.”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know about spirits. We keep them for the eggs, and they make a good soup, too.” The matter-of-fact manner was disconcerting. Elena found herself glancing at the
izba
as if it might sprout chickens’ feet.

“There’s no one in,” the girl said. “My grandma went to see someone, but she’ll be back soon. Did you come to see her?”

“I’m lost,” Elena said, deciding that for once, honesty was the best policy. “I’ve no idea where I am.”

The girl frowned. “What are you doing wandering in the forest? We’re far from anywhere.”

“Do you have a map?” Elena asked. The girl’s frown deepened.

“A what?”

“A plan, of the region?” Surely the child knew what a map was?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe you should wait for my grandmother. She’ll be able to set you straight.” The girl spoke with absolute confidence, making Elena smile. She pictured some ancient, forthright
babushka,
a wrinkled face beneath a head-scarf and no teeth. As long as it was
babushka
and not
baba yaga
. . . But she did not have a great deal of choice.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

Inside, the
izba
was larger than it looked. The girl led her into a long, narrow room running the length of the building. A stove sat in the middle of the room, with a samovar set up in front of a horsehair couch and a low table.

“I’ll make you some tea,” the girl said. “My name’s Masha, by the way.”

“Elena Irinovna.” She sat down on the couch and looked about her. Pictures occupied the walls: oils of mountains and forest. There were a few small miniatures, including a particularly lovely one of the Swan-maiden. Apart from this, the work looked amateur, probably done by an artistic relative rather than purchased. The cushions of the couch, and the rag rugs on the floor, were clearly homemade, worn through by years of occupation. She could have been anywhere from Vladivostok to Kiev. But there was something missing in this homely, pleasant room, and after a minute, Elena realized what it was. There was no crucifix, no rosary hanging on the wall, no sign that this was a Christian country. But perhaps, Elena thought, remembering the
kikimura
as well as the horse clan, Byelovodye was not Christian.

Masha came back into the room, carrying a tray.

“Here. Tea, and some cake.”

“Thank you,” Elena said, genuinely grateful. Anything was better than raw liver. Masha disappeared once more. Elena sipped her tea, ate some of the cake, and tried not to worry about Ilya. She leaned back against the couch. There was a prickling at the back of her neck. She reached up to find that her hair was coming loose. It was, moreover, full of twigs and moss. No wonder Masha had glanced at her so strangely. She must look as though she had been dragged through a hedge. She rose and went in search of a bathroom.

She met Masha in the hallway.

“The washroom? It’s through the door at the end, out the back. There’s a basin and a dipper. We used the
banya
this morning, so the water should still be warm. If you hear a noise, it’s only the
bannik.
Rattle the wash-pan—it scares him off.”

Elena thanked her and went in the direction that the girl had indicated. A washroom had not been quite what she had had in mind, and what was the
bannik?
She remembered it vaguely from the old tales: a thing that haunted the washroom, all bony legs and a wrinkled face. It was said to rake your back with its claws if you had a troubled future. Elena shivered. The less time spent in the
banya,
the better.

She opened the door at the end of the hallway. It was a bedroom: the walls paneled in pale, glossy birchwood, and wide windows leading out onto a veranda. Slowly, walking as if through a dream, Elena went to the window and looked out. There were lilies, folded up now in the cold shadow of the
izba.
What kind of lily, she wondered, bloomed when there was still snow on the ground? To one side of the room, she could see the open door of the
banya.

She stepped into the
banya,
keeping an eye open for the
bannik.
The
banya
seemed empty and she washed quickly in the basin, keeping a close eye on her bag. There was no mirror. She picked leaves from her hair and pinned it up as best she could. A small sound came from beneath the stand with the basin.

Elena stepped swiftly back. She had no intention of bending to see what might be crouching underneath the basin. She could see something in the shadows. She moved to the door and opened it. Sunlight fell through. There was a scuttle of movement from beneath the basin; the
bannik,
it seemed, preferred darkness. She caught sight of a hand, long-fingered with tapering ivory nails, covered in coarse dark hair. It made no move toward her, but Elena went backward through the door and pushed it swiftly shut.

“He won’t hurt you,” someone said.

Elena jumped, and turned to see a woman standing before her.

This must be Masha’s grandmother, but the head-scarfed
babushka
of Elena’s imagination was entirely absent. This woman was no more than fifty and straight as a birch tree. White hair fell to her waist; her eyes were as icy blue as Ilya’s. She wore a long woolen skirt and a blouse. Both were the color of her eyes. She made Elena think of water and winter sun. She looked almost Nordic, and Elena briefly considered Masha’s parentage. There must have been a Siberian marriage at some point.

“My granddaughter told me you were here,” the woman said. “My name is Mati.”

“I’m Elena.”
Mati.
It meant nothing more than “mother” in old Russian. Perhaps it was a family nickname of some kind.

“She also told me that you were lost,” Mati said.

“Yes. That’s right. To be honest, I’ve very little idea how I got here. And your granddaughter didn’t seem to have a map.”

“No, we have none. There is no need,” Mati said serenely. Maybe they simply didn’t go anywhere. There were plenty of people, even in Elena’s day, who barely set foot beyond their own villages. Her anxiety for Ilya was now wire-sharp.

“I have to find out where I am,” she said. “I’m looking for someone.”

Mati nodded. “We’ll do our best to help you.”

Elena followed her back into the main room.

“A moment,” Mati said. “My granddaughter is a good girl, but like all young people, she needs to be reminded what to do. I sent her out to feed the
kikis,
and half an hour later I find her daydreaming on the step.” With a fleeting smile, she disappeared.

Elena opened her bag and searched for her cigarettes. Only two left. She wondered whether Mati was a smoker. She would save them for later. Instead, she fished the hand mirror from her bag and took a quick look at her hair. Not too bad, though a long lock of it had come free from its pins and now snaked down her cheek. Elena tucked it back again, dimly aware of footsteps behind her. A corner of the room was visible in the mirror and she glanced at it, expecting to see Mati.

“The child hasn’t done a thing I told her to do,” Mati’s voice said behind her, but the figure that Elena could see in the mirror was not Masha’s white-haired grandmother.

It was a rusalka.