Enchantment (50 page)

She brought the plane to a sudden halt. “I have all the time in the world to work on this. There’s always a way to do anything I think of. Bear just isn’t strong enough. I’ll have to find somebody else to bind to me. Maybe I’ll use your princess for a while. No, someone much stronger. What about Mikola? Bind him along with Bear, and maybe then I’ll make it fly. Or . . . here’s a thought . . . I’ll go back to your country and take your mother. She’s a clever one. She’ll help me. Or I’ll pluck off pieces of your father and feed them to her. Of course, I’ll do that anyway. She caused me enough trouble to deserve much worse than that. You think I’d ever let you go? The only thing I regret is, I won’t be able to kill you myself. I promised that privilege to another. He’s waited such a long while for me to let him have you. Killing you won’t get him his eye back—but maybe he’ll feel better about having only half his vision after he’s persuaded you to pry your own eyeballs out of your head and offer them to him in your open hands.”

She waved her hands over her head, uttered a couple of incomprehensible words, and disappeared.

I wonder what language
that
was, he thought. And then wondered why he would think of such a useless question at a time like this.

18

Unbinding

Katerina did not like to fly. She had already discovered this on the airplane flight from Kiev. She liked it little better on her other commercial flights. But she did not discover the depth of her distaste for it until she inserted herself into the hang glider and soared out over open air. It filled her with bottomless fear; she clung to the handgrips, her body more rigid than the frame. And then, in each trial flight, forced herself to remember what Ivan had said, what he had shown her, what she had seen. She leaned, she pulled, and soon she learned to find the air currents, to stay level. Nothing fancy—no swoops, no sudden curves. Steady. So she wouldn’t die. So the terror would end.

She spoke not a word about this to anyone, least of all to Ivan. For she already knew that the only mission to be accomplished with this contraption was to enter Baba Yaga’s fortress, and the only one who had any hope of accomplishing anything there was she.

For even though they counted on Baba Yaga being with the army, Katerina knew she would not stay forever. She would be back, and there would be a showdown, and then it would be the strength of all of Katerina’s kingdom against Baba Yaga and the power she had harnessed from a god.

So when Baba Yaga seduced Dimitri all those weeks—or was it months?—ago, she had more in mind than whatever mischief Dimitri might accomplish on his own. Whether he lived or died, one thing was certain: In her confrontation with the witch, Katerina would be weaker because her kingdom was less unified.

She had only one surprise: the child inside her. Mother Esther had taught her how to use that magic. “I used it when I had my son inside me,” Mother said. “As he grew, his power was part of me. For those months, I felt like the goddess of creation. And then he was born, and became his own man, and I was just myself again. But for that time—I pray that it’s enough to make a difference for you, Katerina, if you are pregnant by the time you face the Widow in her den.”

Yes, well, I’m pregnant, all right. I only hope the power that the baby brings to me will compensate for the greater fear I have now, the fear of something happening to harm the child.

The day of battle. She had bound herself thrice over to her people, in ceremonies among the women before she left. So she could feel it, like a vague unease in the back of her mind, the fear of the men as they prepared for battle. She felt the sudden sharpening of alarm, the rush of anger and dismay as the enemy appeared.

“It’s time,” she said.

As they had practiced, the strong young men picked her up, glider and all, and ran together down the slope until the wind caught the wing and she rose above them, gliding away over the treetops. Behind them, she heard them wanly cheer.

Then it was just her, the fragile kite that held her aloft, and the space below her—a distance far too high, so a fall would kill her, and far too low, for she had little faith that she could glide as far as Baba Yaga’s fortress.

At least she had no fear of the glider falling apart, however jury-rigged the thing might be. She had bound it together with spells, each knot and joint and seam and stitch, so that the natural forces that pried at things could not tear this thing apart, not as long as she was in it, gliding over the forests of Taina.

It was all Taina, for even the lands that Baba Yaga had long called her own had once been part of her father’s kingdom, though it was before her father was ever king. If they defeated the witch, it would be Taina land again; if not, then Taina would cease to be. Some other name would come upon the place. As in fact it would no matter what. She thought of the history that Ivan had told her about, the names this land had borne. Great empires had washed across this land—the Golden Horde, Lithuania, Poland, Russia. And now in Ivan’s time, Ukraine. But all were foreign names here, in the end. The land was Taina, underneath it all. The place of her people.

What would she do in Baba Yaga’s stronghold? She did not know. Destroy, that’s all the plan she had. Find the spells, the potions, the supplies she used, and utterly destroy them. Burn down the place, if it would burn, if she could counteract the protective spells. She had learned much from Mother Esther about the art of protecting a house, and by implication therefore the art of unprotecting one. She knew what to look for. She would find it. But would she find it soon enough?

And before she burned it down, she had to find the people from the airplane, and any other captives Baba Yaga might have. It wouldn’t be right for the freedom of Taina to be bought at their expense, not without at least trying to free them first.

The updrafts that she needed were all there. She found them and circled slowly, rising, rising. She felt the progress of the battle. How much longer? Not long at all. Pain. Triumph. Terror. How could she make sense of this?

The walls of the hilltop fortress loomed. Earthen walls, with palisades on top, but not a soldier watching. There were other sentinels that never fell asleep. But none were looking up into the air. Katerina passed over the walls in silence.

Then there were the desperate moments of maneuvering to land within the narrow confines of the stronghold. If there had been archers on the walls, she would have been pierced a hundred times as she descended—no, plummeted—to a brutal landing in a rick of hay. The hang glider crumpled around her, but she had let go in time, and none of her limbs was broken. Or perhaps that was a testimony to the power of the charms she learned from Mother Esther.

She struggled from the hay, gasping, coughing, then stood in silence to get a feel for the magic around her. There would be few traps inside, she knew, because even Baba Yaga wouldn’t want to be bothered with her slaves constantly getting caught in her defenses. Still, there might be talismans that betrayed her presence, calling out to Baba Yaga: Come. An intruder has passed this way.

Or perhaps Baba Yaga was so confident she didn’t need such things. She would sense an intruder herself, would never be taken by surprise as long as she was home. And if she was away, then upon arrival she would sense that someone wrong was here.

No use speculating. If she had any traps or warning talismans, Katerina did not detect them. Either she would be caught or she would not.

What mattered now was to find the heart of the magic in this place. Even that was easy enough. There was nothing subtle about the layout of the place. Baba Yaga’s house was the central building; her most precious places were below the ground.

The halls were lined with shelves of charms and amulets and talismans, stored to be able to equip an army—and these were only the extras, after the army had been equipped! So grandiose were Baba Yaga’s dreams that she imagined someday she’d need all these devices.

Katerina was tempted to take some, to study them. But no, the artifact would always serve its maker, so if she tried to use one, it would work against her. These would burn when the house burned.

Where did she make these things? Where were her ingredients? And where were all her prisoners?

She found them together, in the most obvious place. A large round room, with a fire and a cauldron and many pots, for mixing what she mixed; tables, mirrors, and a large bed. Around the room, chained to the walls, the passengers of the hijacked flight, sleeping as best they could, though only those chained to the lowest rings on the wall could lie down to sleep, and many had to stand. Some of them eyed her incuriously as she came in. She could see that they had eaten little during their confinement.

She hurried to the nearest set of chains and tried to see how they were fastened. Soon enough she saw that powerful spells of binding had been used, so powerful that she could not see a way through them.

How were they made? The spells had to be constructed here. Some of it was done with voice and hands, and there was no hope of guessing the word of unbinding; but if she could see how the spell was made, she could figure out a way to unravel it, or at least could try.

Someone spoke to her, but she didn’t understand him. It was English that he spoke. So she answered him in her own language, lacing it with every Ukrainian or Russian word that Ivan and his parents had taught her. It didn’t work for the man who had spoken—apparently he knew only English—but several others understood and translated for her. “Watch out,” they said, in Russian. “Watch out for the bear.”

A bear? Ivan’s bear from the chasm?

She turned to see the hulking animal shamble into the room on all fours. Seeing her, it rose to its feet, a huge beast that had to be at least twice the height of even as tall a man as Ivan.

So here she was, having accomplished nothing, already caught.

But the bear did not roar or threaten her, unless simply standing there was something of a threat.

“My wife is not at home,” the bear said.

Said! In human speech! She had heard old tales, of course, but had never heard real language from an animal before.

“You’ll have to come again later if you wish to kill her,” he said. “You
are
here to kill her, aren’t you? You didn’t come all this way just to rattle these people’s chains.”

This was not at all the tone that she expected from Baba Yaga’s husband.

“Speechless?” said Bear. “I understand. The sight of me can take a woman’s breath away. Baba Yaga fell quite in love with me the first time we met. I was here to kill her; she thought I had come because she called me. I found, too late, that here was one human who knew spells that could bind even me, who had never been bound. So if you happen to fall in love with me as well, be sure to unbind me from Baba Yaga before you expect me to run away with you.”

“I don’t love you,” Katerina said.

“Ah, she talks after all. I’m a bear, and I was talking more than you!”

“I’m not here for you. I’m here to free these people.”

“Now, that’s too bad. She’s got them rather permanently fastened here. I expect she plans to keep them on display for years and years, until she sweeps away the bones and brings in a new set.”

“She loves death so much?”

“It’s not death she loves, my dear. It’s victory. Power over the vanquished. She can get an amazing amount of gloating time out of each of these poor corpses.”

“They aren’t corpses yet,” said Katerina.

“Well, they will be soon enough. She tried to get me to kill them for her, offered them to me for sport, but I don’t kill for sport. Well, usually not.”

“You’re missing one eye.”

He growled, turning the blind eye away from her. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“You hate her, don’t you?”

“I’m sure I would, if I were at liberty to do so. But you see how it is—I’m ecstatic with devotion for my beloved hag. No husband was ever more faithful. I only have eyes—or rather,
eye
—for her.”

“How can I stop her? How can I undo her magic? How can I break her power and make my people safe from her?”

“If I knew, don’t you think I would have slipped a hint to someone long before now? No, you’re on your own. Fortunately, though, I won’t be here to watch.”

“Why not?”

“Because at this moment, my dear girl-wife has got an enemy of mine pent up in her house-that-flies. She promised me that I could kill him, and I rather think I will, since he cost me this eye.”

“Ivan,” she whispered.

“The very one. He kissed you once, I think. That
was
you, wasn’t it? Did that develop into anything? A relationship?”

“You know it did.”

“Oh, yes, I remember now, my crone mentioned it to me. She was entertained by it all. Young love. Anyway, she wants me to go there and kill your husband as repayment for this eye. And she wants to get back here to deal with you—because of course she knew you were here the moment you arrived. I, for one, planned to sleep through the whole business, but she made me get up to come and deal with you. In fact, she was quite specific, she wanted me in the room with you.”

“Why?”

“I rather imagine it’s because the fastest way to get me to your husband and get Baba Yaga here to you is for her to do that little trick she does where the two of us change places. It’s almost instantaneous. For a moment or two, there’s nothing. And then, there where Baba Yaga was standing, there’ll be me. And where I was standing, there she is.”

“So she’ll be here, and you’ll be there.”

“What a bright girl you are.”

“How can I prevent that?”

“You can’t.”

“Then why are you telling me this? What can I do about it?”

“I think it should be plain by now that I can’t tell you anything directly. Nothing but what she wants me to say. Well, maybe I slip in a little more information than she wanted. But it’s entirely up to you what you do with it. I’d do it quickly, though, if I were you.”

What was she supposed to do? Run? There was no escape from this place, and that wasn’t what she came for, anyway. Nor could she hide, not from Baba Yaga.

She looked at Bear, who was now standing in the middle of the room, motionless. In one place. Very still.

And then she understood. Bear and Baba Yaga would change places
exactly.
Where he was standing, she would be standing. So if Katerina did something to that space, and Baba Yaga arrived inside it . . .

She set to work at once, snatching up a stick from the fire and marking a pentagram in charcoal on the floor around Bear’s feet. The beast stood very still while she drew it. He stood just as still as she carefully but quickly went through the spells of containment. From this place you shall not wander, of your own power these five walls are made, and so on, and so on.

And then she was done.

“Well?” she said. “Enough?”

“We’ll see,” he said. “I’ve been trying very hard not to know what you’ve been doing, and I think that I succeeded. You’ll soon find out, though, won’t you?”

And with those words, he disappeared.

For three infinite seconds, the pentagram was empty.

Then Baba Yaga stood there, looking even more hideous than Katerina remembered from the few times her father had taken her to the court of the high king in Kiev when Baba Yaga was also in attendance there. She turned immediately to face Katerina—the witch had arrived knowing where she was.