The Usurper's Crown (39 page)

Be strong, Medeoan
, Avanasy thought, gazing out across the ocean, which had dimmed to charcoal gray in the shadows of the cliffs.
Wherever you are, I will be with you soon, and together we will restore you to your place.

Through his spell of protection he felt the boat rather than saw it clearly. They should get aboard. Once the moon rose, they could be on their way.

And Ingrid should have been back ages ago with whatever firewood she found. With that thought, Avanasy realized how cold the wind off the water had become. His cheeks and hands tingled, and for a moment, his breath drew sharply.

He clambered over boulders and stones that were little more than lumps of shadow in the deepening night, following the direction Ingrid had taken and cursing himself for forgetting her, even for an instant. He pulled himself over the outcropping that protruded from the cliff, and stood for a moment, taking the measure of the rocky land and dark water, all under a sky that had dimmed to indigo.

In the distance he saw a figure, and realized that not even in the darkness could he mistake Ingrid’s silhouette. She stood with her arms folded and her head tilted upward to gaze at the cloudless heavens.

Relief as much as exertion warmed Avanasy as he picked his way to her side.

“And how fares my lady?”

“I shall have to learn a whole new sky full of stars,” she answered him without looking down. “Otherwise, how will I know which way I’m going?”

Worry stirred inside Avanasy. “Do you feel lost already?”

“I feel useless.” She rubbed her arms. “You were there talking strategy and politics and …” She broke her words off. “I am wondering if, after all, I should have imitated a fisherman’s wife and simply waited for you to come home from the sea.”

Avanasy stroked her arms, seeking to bring her both warmth and reassurance as he pulled her close to his chest. “Does it mean anything to you if I say that I’m glad you did not wait?”

“It does,” she said, but her shoulders did not relax. “Something is wrong, Avanasy.”

“Many things are wrong, Ingrid,” he said, brushing his fingertips across her hair. “Which thing do you mean in particular?”

“Something is wrong with me.”

“How do you mean?” He turned her around to face him so that he might look in her eyes. The falling night had become cold again. “Are you ill?”

“I wish I knew.” She pressed her fist against her stomach. “Something is gnawing at me, Avanasy. It is not worry, it is not regret, it is not loneliness. It is something physical. I first felt it out on the water. Now it has come back, and I cannot make it go away.”

Avanasy laid his hand on her forehead. “No fever. I feel no magic at work here, and yet, there is something, you’re right.” He frowned. “Ingrid, think. When you were with the Bony-Legged Witch, did you take anything from her, or did you give her anything? It does not matter how ineffable it was. Did you exchange anything other than words?”

Ingrid shook her head, but even as she did, she winced. “I thought that it might be my time of month, but …” She winced again and grasped his hand. “Avanasy, what is happening?”

Ingrid’s knees collapsed. Avanasy caught her as she fell, suddenly unconscious as a stone. He had to bite back his cry. Swiftly, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her back away from the waterline. As he did, he saw Ingrid’s silhouette, quite separate from her body, standing out against the darkness. In the next moment, it dissolved into nothingness.

“No. Oh, no.” He laid Ingrid tenderly on a bare patch of sand, and felt for pulse, and felt for breath, but he could find neither. The blush remained on her cheeks, and her eyes moved underneath her lids, but she did not breathe and she was now cold from much more than the wild ocean wind.

Somehow, something had pulled her soul from her body.

It should not have been possible. Ingrid was a divided soul. Her flesh could be led astray, but her spirit was rooted firmly in both worlds and could not be moved. Or, so he had always been taught, and so it was written in every tome he had read. In the Land of Death and Spirit it was just barely conceivable for her to be so separated, especially by as strong a power as Baba Yaga, but from the world of flesh? Avanasy had never even heard legend of such a thing. It was the mortal’s body that was vulnerable, and the sorcerer’s soul. That was the way of it.

“No time, no time,” rasped Avanasy to himself. However it had been done, it had been done, and he had to call her back. But he had so little to work with. A promise might be enough to bind them when in the Silent Lands, but not here.

Avanasy drew his knife. Blood was the first and last resource of any sorcerer, his master had told him. His blood, and hers, his breath, and his magic, those would reach her however far away she had been taken.

He rested the blade against his arm, and in front of him the darkness shifted. It rippled, bowed, distorted and reformed. Avanasy rose slowly so that he stood over Ingrid’s still form, shifting his grip on the knife, ready to strike out instead of down.

A horse and rider stood in front of him now. Both were as black as the darkness from which they had been shaped. Avanasy could see no face under the rider’s obsidian helmet. He rested a black javelin against his black stirrup, and from it a black pennant flapped in the salt wind.

“Sorcerer,” said the rider. “I bring you a message from my mistress.”

Avanasy felt his heart constrict as he realized who faced him. Baba Yaga, the Witch with the Iron Teeth, commanded the service of three knights. She called them her Black Night, her Red Sun, and her Bright Day. They were her spies, and her messengers.

“What does your mistress want with this woman?” There could have been no other reason for this creature to be here. Baba Yaga had taken her away. Again.

Ingrid, Ingrid, I was too slow and too stupid. What have I done?

The faceless knight spoke. “She bids me say that as long as you do not interfere, and as long as the woman does her bidding, neither of you will be harmed, and she will be returned to you.”

“Your mistress has no right to interfere with the soul of this woman.”

“She does not interfere. The woman was broken in twain before she ever came here. My mistress merely waited for her spirit to work itself free.” The horse stood unnaturally still under its rider, more akin to a carved statue than a living beast. “You should be grateful to my mistress, sorcerer,” said the rider in a tone that was both arrogant and casual. “Without her, the woman’s spirit would have simply drifted away.”

But what could have done this?
Avanasy clenched his teeth to keep the question from bursting forth.
It is against all the laws of nature.

Except that in Ingrid’s world, the magic was buried so deeply that only the greatest effort called it forth. What, then, would a tiny spell, or the lightest brush of a spirit power in that other world be in Isavalta where the magic hung heavy in the air? He had not stopped to think. Heedless in his own need for her, desperate in his need to return to Medeoan, he had not even considered that some hurt from that encounter would be harmless in her world and yet would show as a gaping wound in Isavalta.

Fool, fool, fool!
Avanasy’s teeth ground together. With an effort of will he managed set all that aside. At his feet, Ingrid’s skin glowed white in the darkness. He could not let anger at himself cloud his mind.

“It is a grand statement,” he told the knight. “By what does your mistress swear?”

The knight’s helmet tipped back, just a little, as if he lifted his head to look down his nose at Avanasy’s presumption. “She swears by nothing. Who are you to require an oath from the Old Witch?”

“No one,” he admitted. “But if she does not swear, how may I trust her?”

The pennant snapped once, sharply in the wind. It was a sound like a branch breaking. “She has sent her messenger, man. Let that be enough for you.”

“Then,” said Avanasy, feeling the weight of his iron knife in his hand, “let her messenger stay until my wife is returned to me.”

“This woman is not your wife.”

Avanasy should have been afraid, and he knew it. This was the servant of a true power. This was no boggle or spirit of the roof tree to be bribed with a bowl of milk and pretty compliments. This one could kill him if it would. Its mistress could haunt his dreams and ride him mad in the darkness.

But Ingrid lay still as death at his feet, and no other fear could touch him. “I say that she is my wife, and I say you will stay until she is returned to me.”

“You are arrogant, sorcerer. You forget yourself.”

“Forgive me.” He inclined his head without taking his eyes off the shadowy presence. “Perhaps it is only that I have been too long from Isavalta. Nonetheless, you will stay. If your mistress will not swear, you will stay.”

“I have no more words for you.” The rider wheeled his horse around.

Avanasy charged. Knife-first, he leapt for the horse’s reins. The animal reared and a heavy hoof struck Avanasy’s shoulder, felling him to the ground, but his grip held and he swung down his blade. The iron cut through the fabulous cloth the rider wore and stuck fast. The horse reared again, but the rider could not be ripped free from the iron blade and he fell, heavy and silent, to the ground beside Avanasy.

Avanasy, pain burning through his shoulder, ground the knife in deeper until the rider hissed like a snake. He struck out, but his blows had no force. The cold iron that impaled him drained him of strength. The horse, acting for all the world like a mortal beast, bolted into the darkness and was lost to his sight. Perhaps it had gone home to its mistress. Good. Then he would not have to waste attention crafting a message for her.

“Now,” he said to his prisoner. “We will wait together, you and I, and when your mistress returns what is mine, I will return what is hers.”

“You are a fool, man.” The rider’s voice was thick with unaccustomed pain. “You will pay for this, and pay again.”

“I know it well,” answered Avanasy. “In the meantime, we will wait.”

Overhead, the night turned and Avanasy held his grip on the iron knife. Beside him, Ingrid lay cold and motionless, and all of Avanasy’s soul cried out to her.

Come home, my love. Come back to me.

Ingrid watched herself fall unconscious into Avanasy’s arms. She watched his eyes widen with alarm as he caught her.

Avanasy!
cried Ingrid.
Avanasy!

But she could make no sound, and, all unbidden, she felt herself drift away like smoke.

No! No!
She tried to scream, tried to dig in her heels, but she had no sense of place. No touch of the world seemed to reach her. She was air and vapor, and the wind blew her away into the night, out over the seas, faster than thought, until she could not see land, until she could not see stars.

Avanasy!

But for all the force of will in it, her cry was soundless. Darkness of earth and darkness of sky merged, and Ingrid was nowhere. From blackness thick as sleep, dreams emerged, strange flashes of images. She saw a young man and woman wearing clothes stained and wrinkled from long travel. They shouted at each other with heartbreaking fury. She saw herself as a child, holding onto the waistband of Grace’s skirt so Grace could lean out over the edge of a bluff and spread her arms into the wind coming off the lake, pretending she could fly. She saw herself as she was, standing on the deck of an unfamiliar ship, leaning far too far over the gunwale and reaching down for Avanasy, who stood on the shore.

And she saw a stranger, a young woman with auburn hair and strong features that reminded her sharply of Avanasy. The woman stood beside a trio of gravestones and struggled not to weep. Ingrid’s heart went out instantly to the stranger, but she could not tell why.

The images all faded, and instead a formless light shone from the darkness. Ingrid started and tried with all her strength to reach it. She found she could move, but it was like wading through syrup. The light was bright as the sun and slowly it took shape. Now it was a horse and rider, both shining so brightly Ingrid felt she should not have been able to look at them. They trotted away from her. Unable to bear the idea of being left alone in the darkness any longer, Ingrid strained forward, reaching with all the force she possessed, and the light grew brighter, and brighter yet, until the darkness retreated, and Ingrid could see.

She stood under the branches of an ancient birch tree, its branches tossing this way and that, although Ingrid could feel no breeze. A brook ran fresh and free at her feet, but it made no sound. On the other side stood a woman in working clothes and thick boots. Ingrid looked into her brown eyes and saw … herself.

The woman on the other side of the brook was Ingrid’s double. Hair for hair, thread for thread. Ingrid realized she should have been afraid, but she could not be. All she felt was anger radiating at her from her twin, or, was this more than twin? Avanasy had spoken of Ingrid as a divided soul, with a portion of herself in the Land of Death and Spirit. Was this that place again? Was this her other self?

If it was, then this other Ingrid was steeped in fury, but not at Ingrid — at the force that brought her here. It was violation, it was wrong. Her other self lifted her hand, in greeting, in warning or in blessing, Ingrid could not tell. The other did not speak, and Ingrid could find no voice in her throat.

“You’d better go in,” said someone behind her.

Ingrid jerked her head around. Behind her, a cat sat on a fence of ancient pickets much mended with human bones. The cat washed its paw and smoothed down its ears, and looked up at Ingrid with an expression of impossible intelligence.

Behind the cat waited another impossibility. A house, a thatched cottage, ancient and covered with the stains of years, but it turned on a pair of taloned and scaled legs, each as thick around as Ingrid’s own waist. It was a thing out of nightmare, and Ingrid shrank away from it. At the same time, she recognized it. This was what Avanasy had shown her when she thought she stood in a pleasant stone cottage with an old woman who might have been her grandmother.