A Tale of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Volume 2 Page 16

  “Even if I didn’t, I’d give you my last one,” he laughed. “But as it happens, I do.” He dug out another of the loaves, tight-wrapped in dried, tallow-soaked kelp, and handed it to her. “I came prepared. I had no idea how many of you kind ladies I would meet—or even how many genuine beggars.”

  As he finished his meal, he was planning. Baba Yaga…She was the thing you frightened small children with, but she was one of the most deadly witches there was. The only thing that kept her from being a real menace to be hunted down by a Champion was that encounters with her were so infrequent, and took place only in the wilderness. And that she did as many good turns as she did vile things.

  The trouble was she usually did the good turns to good little girls; he had never heard of her doing one for a young man.

  Armed with the knowledge that he was about to encounter the dreaded witch Baba Yaga, he needed to change his plans.

  If he was going to encounter Baba Yaga, the best thing he could do would be to look as if he wasn’t worth a ransom.

  Not that he had ever heard of Baba Yaga holding anyone for ransom. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t have anything she wanted. She wasn’t bound by the conventions of “good” witches to use her powers unselfishly. She could be just as selfish as she liked. He’d heard tales that inside that weird hut of hers it was like a hundred palaces rolled into one.

  But at bottom she was an evil old peasant woman with more grudges than a cur had fleas, and when an evil old peasant woman of that sort got her hands on a prosperous-looking young man…the results were generally less than pleasant for the young man.

  “I don’t suppose,” he asked as he finished the last of his meal, “you’d be able to keep my horse?”

  The cave-witch considered that for a moment. “I don’t know why not. There’s a side cave I could use for a stable. There’s plenty of grazing. And if you aren’t back by autumn—”

  “If I am not back by autumn,” he said a bit grimly, “then I am dead, and you had best think about using my horse to get yourself as far from whatever is brewing in the north as possible.”

  So he left his horse with his new friend, bundled his things on his back, and set off down the road. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d traveled afoot. Even a Fortunate Fool can have accidents, though even accidents generally tended to be the sort that got him where he needed to be at the time he needed to be there. He didn’t expect to be afoot for too long, anyway.

  And he hadn’t gotten more than a league down the road when it happened.

  The road passed through an area of rocks, where the trees thinned out a bit. There was now open sky above him, rather than branches. The first thing he heard the moment he set foot on that stretch of road was a strange roaring sound. It was something like the wind in the trees—except that there was no wind. Then he heard a wild, high-pitched cackling that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It wasn’t sane, that laugh. In fact, it was the laughter of someone who never had more than a nodding acquaintance with sanity.

  But he kept going, pretending he hadn’t heard, either, because he had decided that he was going to pretend to be a deaf-mute. He marched down the road, head high, foolish grin on his face as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  He pretended not to know that the roaring, and the cackling, were approaching him from behind. He forced himself not to react as it drew nearer and nearer.

  And then—

  He found himself knocked flat on his face by a sudden burst of “wind” as the most improbable vehicle in the world shot down the road and skimmed just over the top of where his head had been the moment before.

  The thing, and its driver, spun around in a tight circle and landed right in front of him as he picked himself up out of the dirt.

  It was a giant grey mortar, the sort that apothecaries and herbalists—and witches—used to grind up ingredients in.

  It looked as if it was made of stone, and the pestle somehow hung off the back of it, as if the witch was using it as a rudder. The mortar was fully large enough that it came up to the witch’s waist, and she was not small.

  As remarkable as the vehicle was, the rider was even more striking. She had wild, bright red hair, red eyes and skin of a pale green. Tusks protruded from beneath her withered lips, and her face had more wrinkles than an oak tree’s bark. She wore at least three blouses, each a different clashing color, all layered on top of one another, all in various states of tattered, so that the colors of one showed through the holes of another. She had a kerchief tied loosely on her head, but not as a good, modest housewife would, so that none of her hair showed; no, the witch’s bright red hair stuck out in every direction as if squirrels had been nesting in it. There was a black shawl about her shoulders, three more in different colors tied about her waist. It looked as if she had on as many skirts as she did blouses and for the same reason, because all three of them were torn and tattered. Her neck was hung with necklaces of bones, teeth, tiny skulls, and charms, and her arms were loaded with gold bracelets. She looked down at him out of those red eyes, and there was no more sanity there than you’d see in a goshawk. He scrambled to his feet, bowed, then stood before her, grinning foolishly.

  “Don’t you know better than to get in my way, fool!” she screeched. Her voice was as harsh as a screaming cat’s.

  He allowed puzzlement to creep over his face, though he never stopped smiling, and tilted his head to the side. Then he pointed to his ears and shook his head.

  She spat into the dust. “Bah! Not only a simpleton, but a mute, too!” With a sour look, she flapped her hands, miming speech. He shook his head again. Then, thinking quickly, mimed wood-chopping, then rubbed his belly and looked at her entreatingly.

  She growled and mimed shoveling, then eating, and pointed to him, then to herself.

  He nodded eagerly.

  “Hmph,” she said, though she didn’t seem as irritated as she had been a moment before. She made a gesture; he felt his eyes widen as the mortar began to grow, until it was more than wide enough for both of them. She pointed at the mortar, then at him, then pointed down beside herself.

  So clearly she had just hired him to do her heavy labor, just as he had hoped she would.

  Because if she had something that he needed, this was no bad way to find out what it was, and maybe even get hold of it. And if she thought him to be a simpleton, she would not set him any impossible tasks, such as sorting out three kinds of grain from a heap of several bushels worth.

  Grinning foolishly again, he clambered inside the mortar.

  She hardly waited until he was over the rim. With a shout from the witch, the mortar shot into the sky, tumbling him into the bottom of it. With difficulty, for the mortar was moving as swiftly and as violently as a tiny sailboat on a windy day and heavy seas, he got to his knees, clung to the stone sides of the thing, and peered over the edge.

  They were so far above the trees that the birds were no more than specks, and the ground was shooting past at a rate that made him dizzy.

  He closed his eyes and hung on for all he was worth, wondering if this time he had let himself in for far more than he could handle.

  * * *

  Away over the hills, a tiny paper bird shot across the sky, as swift as an arrow, swifter than a falcon. The spell that animated it had found a target and it was closing in fast.

  CHAPTER 11

  There were six girls in the Jinn’s keeping now, and one of them was trying to kill the other five.

  It wasn’t the Wolf-girl, either. Katya got along perfectly well with her. She was clean, polite, a little shy, but just as determined to find a way out of this captivity as Katya was. More than that, she better understood the ramifications of this terrible desert than any of the rest of them.

  No, the one that was trying to kill the rest of the girls was a Rusalka.

  How and where the Jinn had gotten hold of her, Katya could not imagine. Why he had stolen her, she also had difficulty in understanding. This o
ne was not a ghost; she was a true water spirit, which did make her something of a rarity, and indeed, did make her very, very magical.

  But—

  She was vicious. She had taken over the fountain as soon as she was put down, and the first attempt at a friendly overture by the young sorceress was met with slashing talons. She drowned one of the Jinn’s men the very first night; after that he made the garden off-limits to them, which was a mixed blessing, because even though it meant there were no more guards posted in the garden itself, it also meant that the Rusalka could do whatever she wanted there.

  And what she wanted was to kill everything that wasn’t her.

  Now, she was a water spirit, and as such, Katya could probably control her. The trouble with that idea was that she did not want the Jinn to know she was that strong in magic. She wanted him to think her powers were very minor. If he tried to drain her, she wanted him to underestimate her ability to fight back. Part of her ability to disguise herself was an ability to mask part of her magic.

  Katya had made several attempts at making friends without using magic, and they had all ended badly. The truth was, the creature was a stupid, vicious, violent thing in a beautiful young woman’s body. There was nothing there to make friends with. There was nothing anyone sane would want to make friends with.

  Katya was beginning to get worried though. The paper crane should come back at any moment, and she wasn’t sure if it could find her in their room—

  Worse, surely a brightly colored paper bird flitting down the hallway was bound to be noticed.

  But the Rusalka had made the garden impossible for any of them to stay in.

  As Katya was thinking just that, the Wolf-girl, Lyuba, dashed in wearing her Wolf form. She skidded to a stop and her shape writhed in a way that made Katya’s eyes water, and instead of the Wolf, there was something halfway between Wolf and human on all fours in the middle of the room.

  “Quick!” the thing snarled frantically. “Help! Yulya!”

  Then she transformed back to the Wolf and dashed out, with Katya and Marina right on her heels.

  Katya was expecting the worst, so when she spotted the Rusalka with both hands around Yulya’s neck, trying to shove her under the water in the fountain, she was hardly surprised. Lyuba snarled and charged the evil creature; she slammed into the thing with her shoulder, but couldn’t dislodge it. Marina flung herself at the Rusalka and tore at her hands, to no effect.

  Katya weighed the alternatives all in a moment, closed her eyes, and then exerted her power over water creatures, closing her hand into a fist and concentrating on the Rusalka’s throat.

  The Rusalka choked and gasped, and let go of Yulya.

  As the creature’s hands went to its own throat, Marina and Klava ran in and pulled Yulya out of reach, and Lyuba slammed her shoulder into the thing a second time. This time she managed to knock it off balance and into the fountain. Katya released her hold on the thing, and the five of them retreated to their room.

  Yulya’s throat was bruised and she was gasping for breath, but there was fire in her eyes at last, and she looked ready to go back and take on the Rusalka.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Katya warned, before she could gasp out anything. “Think back to all the fights you must have had with your sisters. Who got in trouble? The one who started it? Or the one who got caught hitting back?”

  Yulya frowned, rubbing her neck. “She almost killed me,” the swan maiden whispered hoarsely. “Surely the Jinn—”

  “I think,” Lyuba put in, speaking slowly, as she always did, “that the Jinn cares only for how many of us he has.”

  Katya nodded. “That was my thought.” She held up a hand. “I have an idea. I have a trick in my pocket—and I just made that insane creature very angry with me. If the Jinn catches her in the act of attacking me, I do not think he will be lenient with her.”

  Klava blinked. “You mean to let her try to kill you?” Even Yulya stopped massaging her bruises to stare at Katya then.

  “Only when the Jinn is there,” Katya reminded them, and grimaced. “I’d rather not have a bruised neck myself, but she can hold me under the water all she likes and I won’t drown.”

  They all gaped at her then. She listened as hard as she ever could for the telltale hum of the Jinn, and heard nothing. One corner of her mouth quirked up. “Oh yes. Water is the same as air to me. I’m not a bereginia. I’m the Sea King’s youngest daughter.”

  After a moment of shock, they began to babble at her. She held up her hand for silence, and got it.

  “I will tell you more, later. Right now, before that devil gets her wits about her, we need to arrange for the Jinn to get rid of her himself.”

  * * *

  Sasha’s eyes felt as if they were going to pop out of his head when he saw their destination.

  He had heard about Baba Yaga’s hut, of course. Who hadn’t? But hearing about it and seeing it were two very different things. In tales it had sounded utterly absurd, laughable almost.

  Take a small peasant hut, no larger than a single room.

  Now attach two giant legs to the bottom of it, so that the hut was easily two stories tall when the legs stood up. And not just any legs. Giant chicken legs. Complete with feathered thighs.

  Now take away the keyhole to the front door and replace it with a mouth full of teeth even a shark would be proud of.

  Now, while the hut squats on the ground like a broody hen, surround it with a fence made of bones.

  Describe it, and it sounds comical. But view it, and it is utterly terrifying. You shouldn’t graft something that is living to something that is not. You shouldn’t have a fence made of bones, with skulls as the decorations on the fence posts. Above all, you shouldn’t have a house that exudes so much malevolence that you expect it to stand up, chase you down, and devour you. How much magic would it take to create a hut, a living thing, with giant chicken legs? What sort of demented soul would imagine it in the first place?

  And then…the fence of bones. Plenty of them were human. Baba Yaga’s victims were so common she made a fence out of their bones. The eye holes of the skulls glowed red, and they all turned to look at him as the mortar circled the house.

  The hut had its back to the front gate. Baba Yaga waved her hand at it. “Turn your back to the forest, your front to me,” she called out.

  The hut rose up on its legs and began to spin, emitting blood-curdling shrieks as it did so. It spun around thirty-three times before settling back down, with the door facing them.

  He shivered. Baba Yaga noticed. And with a casual air that was as macabre as her hut, she patted him on the head like a dog. “You just be a good lad,” she said absently, as she steered her mortar down for a landing in front of the hut. “You just be a good lad, do as you’re told, and you won’t end up in my fence.”

  He shuddered again. He had to remember that he wasn’t supposed to be able to hear. He looked up at her, letting the fear in his eyes show in an exaggerated manner, and cringing. Again she patted his head, pointed to the fence and shook her head.

  With a flexibility and spryness at odds with her apparent age, Baba Yaga sprang out of the mortar, leaving Sasha to follow. He clambered out, and followed her when she crooked her finger at him. “I’m calling you Ivan,” she told him, as they went around the bone fence to a stable and yard behind the hut. “All my menservants are called Ivan. It saves time, I don’t have to try remember their names.”

  Sasha could only grin foolishly; as a deaf-mute, it wouldn’t matter to him what she called him. She waved him over as she flung open the stable doors, then pointed at him and into the stable. “Here’re your charges, and they haven’t had their stalls clean in a long time.” Before Sasha could look into the shadows there and make out what “they” were, she continued with mime, making shoveling motions, pointing at him, then into the stable, then making eating motions. “Muck out the stalls first, eat second.”

  He nodded his understanding vigorously, u
ntil his hair flopped into his eyes and he had to push it back with both hands.

  She trotted away toward her chicken-legged hut, chortling. The hut stood up and a ladder dropped down from underneath. The witch scrambled up it as nimbly as a ferret; the ladder was pulled up and the hut remained standing. But it turned so that the door was facing him.

  It didn’t have eyes…but it felt as if it was staring at him.

  With a shudder, he turned and went quickly into the stable.

  Out of “sight” of the malevolent hut, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the stable. His nose, however, told him that the witch had not been exaggerating. It had been a long time since these stalls were last cleaned out. The smell of dung and urine was thick enough to gag a fly. Quickly, he walked across the stable to the opposite door and flung it open, and a stiff breeze blew through as if conjured, carrying the worst of the stench away.

  And not everything in here was a horse. The sharp smell of predator droppings added a pungency to the overriding stink that was quite unmistakable.

  He pitied the poor animals closed up in here without ever coming into the light—since clearly Baba Yaga did not put them out in the yard by day.

  Well, he might as well make a start.

  Behind him, leaning against the wall, he found a shovel and a manure fork, and before he began, he paused for a moment. To his right, he heard shuffling, growling, and grunting; to his left, sighing. Face the dangerous side first?

  Well, a deaf-mute wouldn’t hear any of that.

  All right, then, he thought, steeled himself, and went to the right.

  The first two stalls were empty. The second contained the largest Wolf he had ever seen in his life. A great, grey, grizzled thing, it was so large that it could easily look him straight in the eyes without trying. It was obviously a Wise Beast, able to reason and communicate.

  It did just that, looking over its shoulder, yellow eyes narrowing in speculation. “So,” the Wolf said, red tongue lolling out, “the old crone sends my dinner in alive now, does she?” It flattened its ears back along its skull and grinned at him rapaciously.