Fortune's Fool (21 page)

“Or to possess it for the power it gives.” She leaned back, and gestured at the chamber. “This is merely the outward aspect of power, Prince. It is not just that this realm has great wealth—it has equally great power. If we chose to exercise it in the world above us—”

“Ah.” His eyes darkened. “But that would bring unpleasant attention down on you. As you yourself have said, there are so many who see something and lust to take it to prevent anyone else from having it. No, my Queen, in the world above, there are far too many greedy creatures that would see your power, your wealth, and yourself and desire to command all three. One, two, or even three—yes, you and yours could hold against them. But they would never stop coming, my Queen. And eventually one of them would win. No, your power is best kept here, where it is. It is nonetheless strong for being hidden.”

Her eyes lit up, and she beckoned to him to come nearer.

Now, when a Queen and a powerful magician wants you to come closer, it is generally a good idea to obey. But Sasha knew very well what she was going to do. And it would be all without intending any harm at all, and second nature to her. All of that magic was about to be channeled into an attempt at seduction aimed at him.

He had, in his way, fought many battles. This was going to be the hardest.

It was just a good thing he’d had some practice at this sort of thing. How many Rusalkas had he encountered since he’d begun making the rounds for the King? The one thing they had in common was that they almost always tried seduction first.

“Wealth and power do not move you, Prince,” she breathed, her green eyes fixed on his, full of promise, her scent filling his nostrils, the heat of her body calling to him. “But beauty, now…is that your passion? Is that what can lure you when nothing else can? Come closer—”

She bent down and curled one arm around his shoulders, like a velvet snake. The scent of her was a mingling of vanilla, musk, and amber. “Is beauty your heart’s desire?” she murmured, bending to kiss his lips. Hers opened as soon as they touched his, and her tongue darted into his mouth. He felt his body yearning for hers, felt the heat of her kiss shooting straight through him—

But the one thing that saved him was this: her seeming passion was dispassionate. It was the form of passion but not the substance. There was heat, but no feeling; what she wanted was only sensation and nothing more. Compared with Katya, this was like the picture of bread compared to a fresh-baked loaf. And eventually, even through the kiss, his body realized that, too.

She felt it, felt the resistance. She sat back up and stared at him, astonished.

“There is a girl I love, Majesty,” he said, simply. “You are more beautiful than she, more radiant, more of everything. But the heart does not listen to anything but its own logic, and it is she whom I love.”

The Queen of the Copper Mountain blinked at him, as at a marvel the like of which she had never seen before.

“So I see,” she said finally, and without rancor. “So I see.”

The Queen of the Copper Mountain had listened patiently and with growing interest as Sasha recounted the course of his adventures so far. By the time his narrative reached the point at which he had come into her hands, she was leaning forward on her throne again, an intrigued and amused smile on her face.

The only time she had shown any sign of impatience was when he had waxed a little too lyrical on Katya’s virtues. As soon as he’d realized that, he had quickly moved on at that point, and privately chided himself for praising one woman to the face of the one she could not compete with. Not clever. Not clever at all. He then set about making his story as funny as possible to make her forget his little faux pas. It was actually a lot easier to do, if he ignored the growing anxiety he had for Katya, the growing uncertainty as to whether or not she was still all right. The business with the Goat and the Wolf was actually quite funny—although he had not seen the two rid themselves of the old hag, he could certainly imagine it, and he happily made up a description that was both vivid and funny enough to have her laughing aloud.

When he finished, she nodded and steepled her fingers together as she leaned back into her fur. “You are loyal, Prince Sasha, a trait which I have seldom seen in the mortals who come into my world. You are loyal and steadfast.” She smiled a bit. “And you are most amusing. I have not laughed so much in a very long time. I am tempted to keep you here—but I think that you would not be so amusing if I made you my prisoner, however comfortable the prison. So I have instructed my people to provision you and take you to the surface—well away from that evil hag, Baba Yaga.”

He wondered for a moment how she could have already “instructed her people”—but then, she and they were magic, and there was no telling what she could and could not do. So he merely bowed. “Thank you, gracious Queen.” He hesitated. “At this point, I have no idea what direction I should look in—”

“Then if I were you, as your betrothed is the Sea King’s daughter, I would begin at the sea. My people will put you within reach of it.” She looked up; hearing a footstep behind him, he saw that the advisers had returned and were waiting in the doorway. “Now I must to my duties. Fare you well, Prince Sasha.”

Well versed in the way of royalty, it did not take having the manservant appear at the other door to tell Sasha he had been dismissed. He left the Queen of the Copper Mountain sitting on her malachite throne and followed in the wake of the manservant.

“You did remarkably well, my lord,” the manservant said, leading him through tunnels that slanted upward. “You amused her without offending her.”

“Call it my Luck,” he said with a shrug. “I try, but an honest man in my place would admit that what happens is as much because of Luck as skill.” The tunnels, low-ceilinged and only lit at intervals, were beginning to make him nervous. He found himself longing to be out and seeing the sun again.

“I think it is more than merely luck. And here we are.”

The room they entered was what Sasha would have called a guardroom or a muster-room. There were weapons and weapon racks hanging on the walls, and crates and barrels of supplies. Presiding over it all was a wizened old man, who, oddly enough, looked completely human.

“Greetings to you, Pavel Romanovitch,” the manservant said to the old fellow. “The Queen wishes you to provision her friend so that I may let him out into the world above again.”

The old man eyed him with astonishment. “By gad! She’s letting him go?”

The manservant nodded gravely. “She was much amused, but he has a love to whom he is faithful, and she has released him to seek her.”

The old man cackled with glee. “See! I win my bet! I
told
you that one day there would come a man down here who would resist her wiles! By gad! This is good seeing!”

The manservant smiled. “And now you are to provision him, and provision him well, we can send him on his way, and you and I will share that bottle I promised you.”

“With a good heart!” The old man began getting things down off walls and out of barrels and boxes. Sasha watched with interest and growing glee as the man put together a rucksack stuff full of everything a traveler might want.

“Weapons?” the old man asked, his hands hovering over a heavy crossbow.

“Dagger and hunting bow,” Sasha replied, looking with regret at the armament arrayed along the wall. “Frankly, I’m not all that good with anything else, and no point in loading myself down with things I can’t use.”

“Smart fellow,” the old man said with a nod, getting down a good hunting bow, a quiver of arrows, and a belt with a long dagger. “Now lad, as pretty as that outfit may be—”

“It’s not fit to travel in,” Sasha interrupted, “I take it you have something better?”

The old man laughed, and brought out much more practical gear. The only thing that Sasha retained was the boots.

“Can’t better those,” Romanovitch said, with a nod of approval. “You might not believe it, but they’ll wear like iron. Now, the Queen said to provision you well, lad, so put this inside your tunic—” And he handed Sasha a coin pouch so fat it barely jingled.

Sasha took it with astonishment. “But I didn’t—”

“’Course you didn’t ask for it. That’s why you got it. Now go on with you! Take that tunnel there. It’ll open out facing east. Just keep going east and you’ll strike the sea.”

Sasha nodded, and took himself out, leaving the manservant and the old man deep in a discussion of just what drink the manservant was going to supply for losing the bet.

This last tunnel was mercifully short, and ended in a massive door. For a moment Sasha wondered how he was going to get it open alone, then he shrugged and tugged at it.

It swung inside silently, with scarcely any effort at all on his part.

He stepped out into the sunlight; the door swung shut again behind him, and when he turned around, he could not tell where, in the rock of the mountainside, it was.

Face east, and keep going.

He stood on a small ledge; a gravel-covered slope lay before him. He had emerged well above the tree line and, as he had expected, the sea was nowhere in sight. The Queen’s idea of what was within reach and a mortal’s were apt to be different. It looked as if his little sojourn with Baba Yaga had taken him far, far out of his path. But there was no hope for it, and the journey was not getting any shorter for standing there.

The slope was quite slippery; he had to descend it by moving obliquely across the face of it, which was pretty much adding three times as much to the distance between him and the tree line. And what he was going to do when he got there—

Make camp, I suppose,
he thought dubiously, looking at the sun.
If I don’t do so before I lose the light, it’d be awkward to try to find a place to hole up in the dark. The saints only know what’s in those woods, or out of them for that mat—

And then, he froze, as the howl of a Wolf echoed across the face of the mountain.

He looked frantically in all directions, but there was only one place where there was any cover at all—the forest down below. If there was a hunting Wolf out here, he needed to get somewhere that he could get out of reach. In a tree would certainly be his first choice—

Throwing caution to the wind and with his heart pounding wildly, he began a precipitous run down the mountainside, boots slipping and sliding in the gravel. The Wolf’s howl followed him; it was definitely at his back and closing.

Closing fast, by the sound of it.

He wouldn’t look back. His heart raced, and his vision narrowed. He concentrated on the tree line. The Wolf might be getting nearer, but so were the trees. If he could just make it—

A heavy, hairy body slammed into his from behind, and involuntarily, he screamed as he went face-down into the gravel. An enormous paw flipped him over onto his back—

And a tongue the size of a cow’s slapped into his face and licked him from chin to hairline.

The Wolf stood with both forepaws on his shoulders and grinned down at him, tongue lolling. “I knew if we stuck around this mountain long enough, you’d come out,” it said, its hot breath washing over him. “Was the Queen nice?”

“The Queen—
oof
—was very kind indeed. And if you’d get off my shoulders so I can get up, I would be a lot more comfortable.” The Wolf leaped lightly back, and Sasha sat up. Fortunately, he had not actually hit the gravel with his face, but his healing bruises were telling him a sad story indeed. “I’m very happy to see you, Wolf. I take it the lady of the unusual hut was unable to persuade you to enjoy her hospitality any further?”

“Fortune was all against her,” the Wolf said mockingly. “On her way home, before she even managed to fetch her mortar, she got into a quarrel with a leshii, and she now has quite enough to worry about. True, she is Baba Yaga, but he is the master of the forest, and it’s two bulls locking horns, is what it is. She’ll win in the end, but it will cost her. That’s what she gets for breaking her bargains.”

Sasha sighed with relief. That meant Sergei was also probably fine. The moment the witch had got herself into difficulty, she’d surely called back her ghosts to help her.

“And speaking of locking horns—” The Wolf turned up his nose and howled again. “We still do owe you our thanks, and I think you’ll be glad—”

There was a sound like thunder in the distance, and over the slope of the mountain came the Goat at an all-out run, head down, negotiating the steep slope as easily as if it were a flat meadow. He skidded to a stop beside the Wolf in a shower of small stones, and shook his horns.

“Slow, slow, slow,” mocked the Wolf. “It is a good thing I am not inclined to eat you, because I would have no trouble catching you.”

“On the flat, maybe, but I should like to see you chase me on the cliffs!” the Goat replied, with a baa-ing laugh. “And then I should knock you over the side of one, and then where would you be? So Prince! I have a request to make of you and an offer to pay you back for your kindness.”

“I’ve paid back already, I tracked him down for you,” the Wolf said, with another grin. “Travel well, Prince! Perhaps one day we’ll meet again!”

And with that, the Wolf bounded off into the forest, and vanished from sight among the trees. The Goat snorted.

“As you can plainly see,” said the Goat, turning toward Sasha, “I still have on this pesky saddle and bridle. I am not inclined to ask just anyone to take it off, since I would likely end up a captive again. However this is a good thing for both of us; since I still have it on, I can carry you to wherever you want to go, and when we get there, you can take it off for me. I am happy to take you anywhere you like, in return for your kindness in freeing me.”

“That would be wonderful,” Sasha replied with heartfelt relief. “It would be more than wonderful. I need to get to the sea—a port, if possible—”

“Then climb on my back, Fortunate Fool, and hold on tight!” said the Goat merrily. “You will be eating fish for dinner!”

He really should have expected that a Goat the size of a horse was not the ordinary sort of mount.

The Goat did not fly, as Sergei did, but it might just as well have. It leaped. It made enormous leaps that took it right over the tops of the trees, and in fact, so dense was the forest canopy that once it
was
above the treetops, it used them instead of the ground as its landing and leaping platforms. It was dizzying, and at once terrifying and exhilarating. Each leap seemed to cover about seven leagues, making Sasha wonder if this was how the owners of those famed seven-league boots got about.

He held onto the Goat’s horns instead of the bridle; a bridle, after all, was for someone who knew where he and his mount should be going, which he particularly did
not.
They bounded along so fast that Sasha really didn’t get to see much of the landscape; when the Goat finally landed just as the sun was setting, and then didn’t move again, it took him a moment to realize they had reached their destination.

When he did so, he immediately swung his leg over and dropped down onto the ground, then took off the saddle and bridle. The Goat sighed and shook his whole body.

Sasha looked down at the town. It was a proper town indeed, with streets and shops, a fine church, and the port and docks. There were several ships tied up at the docks, and surely one of them would be going north.

“Oh now, that is good to be rid of that tack,” the Goat said. “What are you going to do with those?” He pointed his long nose at the saddle and bridle. “They look valuable.”

“They probably are,” Sasha said, absently. He noticed that they had landed not that far from a peasant hut that looked rather in need of repair. A sad-eyed little girl played listlessly in front; his heart ached to see her, for she looked too malnourished even to play properly. He picked up the tack and carried it over to her. She leaped up and stared at him as he approached.

“Tell your father,” said Sasha, “that I make him a present of this, having no more need of it, and that he is to sell it and buy you a she-goat. But you must take very, very good care of the goat, because she will give you milk to drink, and to make into yogurt and cheese. Do you understand?”

Wordlessly, the child nodded, and he went back to the Goat, leaving her squatting down beside the saddle, touching it with one hesitant finger.