I was gulping for breath on a riverbed of dull metal, a few scattered lumps of gold that hadn’t quite melted stuck into it here and there, and water running like rain down all the tunnel walls. As the golden sunlight faded out of the mountain walls—escaping back to where it had come from, I hoped—the water running past me climbed up the slope and reached the crack in a great cloud of steam, and cooled the glass and metal solid again, sealing the mountain face in crystal entwined with lines of metal flecked with gold.
The air in the tunnel started growing colder rapidly, enough to chill the sweat that had for once broken out on my skin. The lines of water trickling down the tunnel walls were already freezing into solid white, and gleaming thin icicles stretched narrow points down from the ceiling as ice began to crust the river. I turned and had to struggle against the quickly freezing current back to the empty storeroom: by the time I reached it, all the river was a mass of jagged shards of ice sloshing around me, like broken pieces of glass themselves rising and falling in waves, and the doors of the great storeroom flung open suddenly and the Staryk king rushed in.
He reached down and caught me by the waist and lifted me out onto the bank. He was breathing hard; he’d lost some of his own sharp edges in the fighting, melted away to smooth curves with blue showing through beneath the surface, but new layers of thick ice were already building over his skin as quickly as over the surface of the river, and fresh gleaming icicle points were sprouting in clusters from his shoulders, frosted with white at first but already hardening to clear.
He stood there holding me by the waist a moment longer, his face almost stricken as he looked down the tunnel, at the lacework vein of metal binding the mountainside shut. Then he turned back and seized both my hands in his, gripping them tight as he stared down at me, a glitter of light caught in his eyes almost like the sunlight shining through the mountain walls. I stared back up at him, and for an instant I thought he would— Then he let go both my hands and stepped back and in a deep graceful courtesy went down on one knee before me and bowed his head, and said, “Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed.”
* * *
My poor Irina’s hair had fallen half loose, a great tangled mess, cold and wet and snarled black with the same dirt as under her broken fingernails, her bruised and frozen hands. I took the crown off her head and put it aside, and I washed her hands until the dirt and blood came free and they did not look bloodless anymore. She was drooping, her shoulders bent, and I was putting the bandages around her hands when she jerked her head suddenly up and looked at the mirror, her face pale.
“Irina, what is it?” I whispered.
“Fire,” she said. “The fire is coming back. Magreta, go quickly—”
But it was too late. A hand came out of the glass, terribly, like a fish surfacing out of still water, and it caught the edge of the mirror’s frame with its fingertips. It looked like a low-burning log, grey with ash and scorched soot-black beneath, with a core of glowing flame. A second came out also and together they pulled the demon’s head and shoulders out all at once. I could not move. I was a rabbit, a deer, halted in the trees, trying to be small and still and unseen; I was hiding in a dark cellar behind a secret door, hoping not to be heard. My voice was locked in my throat.
The demon came out so quickly, uncovered by any illusion of being a man. It crawled with dreadful speed out of the mirror and onto the floor, smoke rising in curls from its back, its legs dragging and dark behind it, and caught with a thrashing hand at the table nearby to pull itself up, the table where the magical crown stood. “Irina, Irina sweet, what betrayal you have wrought against me!” it hissed at her, even as it came. “Never again can I feast in the winter halls! He came, he came, the winter king; the queen closed the mountain against me! They banished me forth, they carved my strength, she stole my flame to mend their wall!”
It turned and with a great sweep of its smoking arm it struck away the mirror and the table over; the glass shattered everywhere, and the crown rolled over the floor beneath the bed. Irina moved for me; she pushed me away towards the door, but the demon went darting quicker than we could, in a sudden violent rush over the floor despite its dragging feet, and blocked our way. It stamped on the floor heavily, and a little of the flame glowed red again in its thighs and down to a few spark-flickers deep in its feet, hot coals being stirred to wake a fire. “I am so thirsty, I am so parched!” the demon said, a complaining crackle. “I must drink deep again! I wanted to linger, Irina, on you! How long I would have savored your taste! But at least weep for me once, Irina sweet, and give me a measure of pain.”
I was weeping, I was afraid; but Irina stood in front of me straight and said, cold as ice, even in the face of the demon, “I brought the Staryk to you, Chernobog, as I promised, and I let you into the Staryk realm. And I have wept already once, for what you would have done. I have given you all you have asked for. I will give you nothing more.”
He snarled at her and came upon us. I sank in terror as my legs gave way beneath me, falling back upon the couch; I could not even look away as he thrust himself across the room and seized Irina by her arms, his hot breath a wind in our faces, horror—and then he recoiled with a howling as if he was the one burned, and jumped back cradling both his hands.
They looked like cold coals fresh from the scuttle that had never seen a fire. He moaned and hissed and wailed over his hands, opening and closing them as though they pained him after a day of long work. Gouts of steam came rising as he stretched them until a crackle of flame burst out through the surface and they were glowing furnace-red again. Then he looked up from them at Irina in wide burning fury and shrieked in rage, “No! No! You are mine! My feast!” and stamped, and then he turned—turned upon me, and I screamed at last, my throat opened, as he lunged to seize me instead.
For a moment only I felt the touch of his dreadful fingers on my face: heat like a fever beneath them, sweating and sick. But it was a fever in someone else’s body, and it did not come into mine; instead the demon sprang back from me with another crackling wail, those fingertips gone dull-cold once more. He stared down at me with an open mouth of rage, flames of hell leaping within like a deep furnace. Irina put her hand on my shoulder. “Me and mine,” she said slowly. “You must leave me and mine alone, Chernobog; you gave your word, and I have had nothing else of you.”
He was staring at her when the door of the room opened. A scullery-maid looked in timidly, as if she’d heard my scream and come to see what was wrong. She stared at the demon and her mouth opened, but it was too much wrong; she too went animal-still in horror. The demon turned and saw her; it went lunging at her, though it paused for a moment, gone wary, and reached down with one finger only to touch her soft young cheek as she turned her face cringing away in terror, her hands held up to ward.
I covered my mouth with my hands; I almost screamed again, but next to me Irina did not even move. She stood still, tall and proud, looking across the room at the demon with her cold, clear eyes, and there was no surprise in her face when the demon pulled its finger away with a snarling noise and twisted back and came towards us again, enraged. But he was not so wild as to try to put his hands on us again, though he wanted to: he stopped short and stamped furiously. “No!” he shrieked. “No! I promised safety only to you and yours!”
“Yes,” Irina said. “And she also is mine. All of them are mine, my people; every last soul in Lithvas. And you will touch none of them again.”