Fortune's Fool Read online

  Fortune’s Fool

  207

  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.

  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 ramifi-cations 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 one 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—

  Fortune’s Fool

  209

  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 under-estimate 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.

  210

  Mercedes Lackey

  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.

  Fortune’s Fool

  211

  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.”

  212

  Mercedes Lackey

  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 Fortune’s Fool

  213

  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 214

  Mercedes Lackey

  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, until his hair flopped into his eyes and he had to push it back with both hands.

  She trotted away toward her chicken-legged hut, chor-tling. 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 exagger-

  Fortune’s Fool

  215

  ating. 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, 216

  Mercedes Lackey

  does she?” It flattened its ears back along its skull and grinned at him rapaciously.

  “I think, sir,” said Sasha carefully, giving up his pretense and hoping they wouldn’t tell the Baba, “that eating me would be a mistake. You might upset the witch who hired me to clean her stables, you would certainly upset my betrothed, who is the Sea King’s daughter, and you would still be standing in filth when you were done eating me.”

  The Wolf tilted his head to the side, ears going up.

  “Good arguments, all of them,” he admitted. “Very well, I will not eat you.”

  “If you don’t mind, I should like to move you while I clean your home,” Sasha replied, making a little gesture toward the chain holding the wolf to the watering trough, which had a scum of green algae in one corner.

  The Wolf yawned hugely, showing white teeth as long as Sasha’s fingers. “It is all one to me,” said the Wolf. “Until the old witch needs me to track down an enemy and turns me loose, one place in this stable is much like another. I am bound to her with the enchantment on the collar.”

  Sasha moved into the stall, bowed once to the Wolf as if to a boyar, then unchained the beast. Its shoulders were on a level with his, and it was easily big enough to ride, if it would allow such a thing.

  “If you are hungry, I have some bread,” Sasha said, as he led the Wolf to the next stall.

  “Bread! It is long since I tasted bread! Yes, I will have some,” the Wolf replied, its ears up, and its tail wagging Fortune’s Fool

  217

  ever so slightly. Sasha went to get one of his remaining loaves of bread from his belongings, and also fetched a pail of clean, cold water from the well.

  “Here you are, my lord Wolf,” Sasha said, unwrapping the bread for him and putting down the water. “I shall have your home cleaned in as little time as may be.”

  Big as he was, fierce as he was, the Wolf began nibbling daintily at the loaf. “A kindly woman baked this bread, and she thought well of you,” he said, yellow eyes softening and losing some of their fierceness.

  Sasha said nothing, only went to work with shovel and fork and barrow to clean out the stall, then returned with armfuls of sweet straw mixed with rushes to make a thick bed. There were some bones that he thought were not human, stacked ready to repair the fence perhaps. He took some of them and left them in one corner for the Wolf to chew on to ease its boredom, then filled the clean stone watering trough with sweet water. He returned to the Wolf, mane comb and brushes he had found in hand.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I think it is long since you had a brushing,” he said diffidently.

  The Wolf looked at him down its long nose. “I think that you are right,” it replied, “and I would not say you nay.”

  So before he returned the Wolf to its stall and chained it up again, he worked hard with brush and comb until the Wolf’s pelt was as soft and shining as a lady’s lapdog, and free of clumps of winter’s underfur. He then took a broom and swept all the fur out the door for the birds to take to line their nests.

  218

  Mercedes Lackey

  That was all that there was on the right-hand side of the stables, but Sasha cleaned up the stalls anyway, and moved in fresh bedding. Then he went to the left-hand side.

  Once again, the first stall was empty, but the second contained the biggest black he-goat that Sasha had ever seen in his life; it was easily the size of a warhorse. Sasha bowed to it, as to a boyar, while it looked at him down its long nose.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I would like to move you while I clean your home,” Sasha said to it. The he-goat shook his massive head till his ears rattled against his huge, curved, and cruelly pointed horns, and looked at Sasha sideways out of his big golden eyes with their bean-shaped pupils.

  “Well, it’s all one to me,” the wise Goat said. “I’m doing nothing here until the witch decides to hunt something and saddles me for riding.” And Sasha looked at the side of the
stall and saw a proper-sized saddle of bronze and a bridle of gold.

  He untied the Goat and led him to the next stall, then asked, “Would you like some bread to eat while I clean your home?”

  “Bread!” the Goat exclaimed, and his eyes grew greedy. “It is a long time since I had any bread!”

  “Then I am happy to share mine,” said Sasha, who got another loaf from his belongings. He brought it and a bucket of cold, sweet water for the Goat, then set about cleaning the stall thoroughly. As with the Wolf, he then brushed and combed the Goat until the beast’s long hair Fortune’s Fool

  219

  was soft and silky again, as lovely as a maiden’s hair, and free of all the knots that had been in it.

  “You’ve done me good turns, young man,” the Goat said as Sasha returned him to his stall, now deep with clean straw and rushes, the manger full of hay, the bucket full of grain, the trough full of pure water. “I won’t forget them.”

  Sasha moved on to the final stall, at the end of the stable, in a melancholy corner where very little light penetrated. He could see something small moving about in the darkest part of the stall, but couldn’t make out what it was.

  “Hello?” he said, tentatively. “I’m here to clean your home.”

  There was a huge sigh from the darkness, the same one he had heard when he’d come in through the door.

  “It’s not my home,” said a sad voice. “And I don’t know that it makes any difference. When you’re done here, she’ll eat you and add your bones to the fence and my stall will just get dirty all over again.”

  “That’s no way to think!” Sasha said sharply, and came into the stall. And to his amazement, as his eyes got used to the deeper shadow, he knew the creature that was in there. It was as small as a child’s pony, as small as a donkey, with ears a yard long and two humps on its back. Its coal-black eyes were dull with depression, its coat unkempt and dusty, so that nothing of the original color could be seen.