A Question of Magic (20 page)

“Here she is, Chorly,” he said, setting her down just inside the door.

Serafina glanced at this second man. He had a long burn mark on his face and he was scowling as if he had seen something loathsome. “That's her, all right,” said Chorly. “She's older now, but I'd remember her anywhere. Take her downstairs.”

Hefting her over his shoulder again, the man who had abducted Serafina carried her down a set of rickety stairs to a cool, dark room where a smoking torch mounted on the wall provided the only light. After setting her on a wooden bench, he plodded up the stairs, closing the door at the top behind him.

Rubbing her ribs where they'd pressed into the man's shoulder, Serafina studied the room. She could tell that she was in a root cellar from the barrels lined up against one wall and the few dried apples and pieces of broken carrot on the dirt floor. The room was chilly and smelled
like soil and onions and had the musty odor peculiar to old storage spaces. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, hoping that her captors wouldn't make her stay down there for long.

The door above opened, and Serafina looked up to see feet descending one slow step at a time. As the man came farther down the stairs, she saw that it was Chorly with a candle in his hand. He was limping badly, and suddenly Serafina remembered him screaming as he fell out of her lurching cottage. This man had been one of the thieves who had forced their way into her home.

Chorly had almost reached the bottom of the stairs when three others clattered down behind him. Serafina watched as a taller man came forward and the light of the candle fell on his face. The scar crossing his lips looked even more sinister in the flickering light than it had inside her cottage.

“I wondered when I'd see you again,” he said. “I'm glad I didn't kill you the last time we met. You're going to be quite useful.”

“How is that?” asked Serafina. “Do you want me to answer a question for Lord Zivon?”

One side of the man's lips pulled back in a scornful sneer. “You already answered a question for me, remember? It wasn't even the one I really wanted.”

“You're Zivon?” she said, sounding surprised. “I thought you were a thief.”

“Lord
Zivon,” he corrected her, his eyes turning cold and hard. “We all play different roles when necessary. And now your role requires that you answer questions. Chorly, who is our first volunteer?”

Handing the candle to one of the other men, Chorly limped to the bottom of the stairs and barked an order at someone standing above. A thin man with a dirty bandage wrapped around his head crept down the stairs. He kept his eyes on Lord Zivon like a mouse might watch a cat. When the man paused at the bottom of the steps, Chorly shoved him toward Serafina, saying, “Go ahead. Ask your question.”

The man stumbled into her, then took two steps back and turned so he could still see Lord Zivon. Wetting his lips with his tongue, he said in a shaky voice, “Did you really tell Prince Cynrik that he would win?”

“I told him what he would need to do to end the war,” Serafina said in her Baba Yaga voice.

Lord Zivon nodded. “Pay him off, Chorly.”

Chorly handed a coin to the one who had asked the question and then motioned toward the door. The paid man scurried up the stairs without a backward glance. A moment later another man came down the stairs to
take his place. Dressed in homespun clothes and dirty sandals, he looked like a farmer.

“Go ahead,” said Chorly.

The man hesitated, looking down at Serafina, who could see the indecision in his eyes. Before he could begin, she met his gaze directly and said, “You do know that if you ask me a question on Lord Zivon's behalf, you'll never be able to ask me one of your own? Is it really worth a coin to lose the chance to ask me something that is important to you?”

“Don't listen to her,” snapped Lord Zivon. “Ask the question before I lose my patience.”

The man bit his lip. Taking a deep breath, he said all in a rush, “King Borysko has signed a treaty with King Kolenka, but he's labeled Lord Zivon as a traitor. He has already confiscated Lord Zivon's lands and robbed him of his titles. What must Lord Zivon do to get his lands and titles back?”

“Because of Lord Zivon's heinous crimes, there is nothing he can do to regain his lands, his titles, or his position in King Borysko's eyes,” Serafina said in her Baba Yaga voice. “However, in three generations' time, a member of Zivon's line will distinguish himself in battle fighting for King Borysko's descendant. Some of Zivon's lands will be returned to his descendant then.”

No one looked happy about her answer, least of all Zivon. As Chorly hustled the farmer from the room, Zivon's sneer became more pronounced. “That answer must make you very happy.”

“Not at all,” said Serafina. “I just give the answers. They have nothing to do with me.”

“I'm sure you were happy to tell Cynrik how to win.”

Serafina shook her head. “I don't like it when people fight for any reason.”

The sound of thudding feet came from above. Chorly whispered into Lord Zivon's ear, and then all the men climbed the stairs, taking the candle with them. One of them shut the door, and Serafina was left alone, straining to hear any sound. She doubted that Zivon was finished with her yet.

Minutes passed as she listened to people moving above her. Then suddenly it was quiet and she wondered if they had gone. Serafina eyed the stairs, thinking about how hard it would be to climb them, but before she'd gotten up from the bench, the door creaked open and closed again.

Serafina held her breath as the burly man who had carried her into the room came down the stairs. “I've come to ask you a question,” he said in a near whisper,
“but we have to be quick. There's no telling when they'll be back. My friends and I want to know—what will happen to us if we stay with Lord Zivon?”

Serafina sighed. She was getting frailer with each question, and her back now had a pronounced curve. Speaking in her Baba Yaga voice, she said, “If you stay with Zivon, you and your friends will be hunted down like wild beasts and die in disgrace. Should you leave now, you can return to your families and no one will know that you sided with a traitor.”

The man nodded as if she had confirmed something he was already thinking. “Then we'd best go now before Zivon comes back,” he said. “He isn't going to like this one bit.”

He was halfway up the stairs again when Serafina called out, “If you're leaving, could you take me with you?”

The man stopped long enough to shake his head. “If I leave, he'll be angry, but he won't come after me. If I take you with me, he'd hunt us both down, but I'm the one he'd kill.”

This time when he shut the door, Serafina could hear the scrape of a bolt as he locked the door behind him. She rubbed her arms again, trying to chafe away the
chill. With the door locked, there wasn't much use climbing the stairs. She'd just have to wait for another opportunity.

Serafina must have dozed off, because the next thing she knew, men were shouting upstairs and making the floor above her shake as they ran. She wondered how long it would be before they came to see her again and wasn't surprised when Zivon came running down the steps, stopping partway when he saw that she was still there.

“Did my men talk to you while I was gone?” he demanded, scowling.

“Yes,” she said.

“And what did you tell them?”

“Very little.”

Zivon came down the rest of the steps, glaring at her the whole way. “If you don't answer my questions, old woman, I'll have Chorly make you, and there's nothing he'd like better.”

There really wasn't any point in keeping it a secret. Zivon had probably already guessed what had happened and just wanted her to confirm it. “I told them the truth, of course. Then the man said that he and his friends were going to leave.”

Zivon swore under his breath, glaring at Serafina as
if he wanted to throttle her. “You are not to talk to my men anymore.”

“I can't help but answer their first questions,” she warned.

“They won't be asking you anything,” he declared, and turned to go back up the stairs.

Although Zivon closed the door behind him, Serafina could make out some of what he shouted at his men. No one was to speak to her at all, and anyone who dared to ask her a question would have to deal with him.

Once again she was left alone, and once again she dozed. The torch was guttering and about to go out when Chorly brought down a chunk of stale bread and a bowl of cold boiled cabbage. He also brought her a thin blanket, which she wrapped around herself, grateful for even that small bit of warmth. Chorly looked at her as if daring her to try to talk to him, but all she did was thank him and start nibbling the bread.

Sitting alone in the quiet cellar, Serafina found her mind wandering. She remembered Widow Zloto's warnings about bad luck and how everyone had laughed at her superstitions. Maybe the old woman had been right. Maybe her superstitions really did tell people how to avoid bad luck. Viktor's whistling in the tavern could have been the start, but whatever the cause, Serafina's
luck couldn't have gotten much worse. If only Widow Zloto had spent as much time talking about good luck as she had about bad, Serafina might have figured out a way to change her luck.

Something scurried in the dark corner of the cellar, and Serafina turned to look behind her.
Rats
, she thought.
This cellar is probably full of them
. Pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders, she lay down on the bench, not wanting to sleep on the floor if there were rats.

Serafina dreaded the long, cold night ahead. She had so much on her mind that she was certain she wasn't going to be able to sleep. Since the day Alek asked his question, she'd been excited about the future, but now she had nothing ahead of her except whatever terrible thing Zivon had planned. Even if she didn't die of old age soon, she doubted he was going to let her go. And because no one knew where she was, no one was going to come looking for her.

Serafina dozed off and on that night and finally woke to the sound of hesitant footsteps on the stairs. Rubbing her eyelids, she turned her head to look up. A pool of torchlight spilled down the steps, growing larger as the person carrying it came nearer. It was Chorly with another man close behind him.

Serafina shivered. Stiff and sore, she sat up slowly as Chorly replaced the torch on the wall with a fresh one.

“Payment first,” he told the man who had followed him down. Holding out his hand, Chorly gave the other man an expectant look.

The new man handed him some coins, then waited until he and Serafina were alone before saying, “If it's true that you're Baba Yaga, I have a question for you.”

“Go ahead,” she said, suddenly certain of the fate Zivon had planned for her. If he had his way, she would stay locked in his cellar for the rest of her life so that people had to pay him before they could ask her their question.

“My father buried his gold on his farm before the war. He died just before the war ended without telling us where to find the gold.”

“And your question?” said Serafina.

“Where's the gold?” said the man, sounding impatient.

The man's question reminded Serafina so much of similar questions she'd been asked in the past that she felt as if in some ways nothing had changed. After answering him in her Baba Yaga voice, she thought about asking him for help, but from the occasional creak at the top of the stairs, she was fairly sure that Chorly was listening. Her captors had also learned where the gold was buried.

Three more people with questions came down the stairs in quick succession after that. All three wanted to know about lost relatives. After the third one left, Chorly brought Serafina more stale bread and a mug of tepid water. She spent the rest of the day seeing one person after another. By the time the last person left, she was
so tired she could scarcely keep her eyelids from drifting shut. Her joints ached and her knuckles were swollen. Glancing at her hands, she saw that her fingers were no longer straight. Answering so many questions was making her body age faster than it ever had before.

When the door at the top of the stairs opened again, the smell of roasting meat wafted into the cellar. Serafina perked up, looking forward to dinner. Time seemed to crawl as she waited for Chorly, but when he came down the stairs, all he brought was cold boiled cabbage. She knew it would do no good to protest.

The next two days were just like the first. So many people came to see Serafina that she began to wonder how the men were finding them all. Some paid with coins; others brought old family jewelry, treasured bits of lace, even a pair of good shoes.

Although more than one person asked her how to find a family fortune, the most-asked questions were about missing relatives and friends. Each piece of bad news she gave depressed her even as it made her body age; she dreaded seeing the next person on the stairs. Her hearing was getting bad, and she had to ask people to repeat their questions. Tiring easily, she dozed
between visitors, waking when Chorly shook her shoulder. Her back hurt so much that it was hard to get comfortable, and her knees were sore all the time. She was so achy that walking was a chore, although she tried to pace when she was alone at night before the torch went out, hoping to relieve some of the stiffness in her legs. If she was going to escape, she would have to do it soon.