He shuddered as if I’d asked him to drive me to the gates of Hell. “To the sunlit world? That is no distance to be crossed, save upon the king’s road, and at his will.”
When he said it, I realized only then that there was no sign of the white trees and the silver-white road that we’d traveled to reach the mountain. I turned and looked behind me. It was the same view: the glass mountain rose there tall and shining-bright, and two runner tracks ran away behind the sleigh through deep snow all the way to the silver gates. I could see the waterfall, now frozen, and the shining line of the river going towards the trees. But the Staryk road was missing as though it had never been there at all, and all the trees I could see ahead of us were dark pines, made white only with their heavy loads of snow.
I sank back into the seat, brooding, and as I didn’t say anything to turn him back, the driver kept on going. There wasn’t any other road, either: he drove onto the frozen surface of the river instead, the only path I saw between the trees. The deer didn’t seem to have any trouble running even on the ice; perhaps the claws on their hooves helped them.
The Staryk kingdom seemed endless forest otherwise. I saw nothing around us, no other buildings at all, and when I forgot and asked the driver whether any of them lived outside their mountain of ice, he didn’t answer, only glanced back at me as much as to say, Ask the king. We drove a long time and nothing changed. The day should have been going on towards noon, but instead it only grew more dim the farther we went from the mountain, the unmarked grey of the sky fading to a twilight dimness, and the trees and snow around us beginning to grow hazy and hard to see.
In the distance a line of deeper black appeared on the horizon, in the narrow opening between the trees where the river met the sky. The deer slowed, and Shofer glanced back at me. He didn’t want to keep going, the same way Flek hadn’t wanted to keep going, down into the mountain’s depths, and my sore legs reminded me of the punishment for pushing. But if I let them decide for me where I should go, I’d certainly never make an escape.
“Should we go back?” I said, making it a question, a little maliciously, to see if he could be prodded. He hesitated, and then he turned back to the deer without answering me and spoke a sharp word to them instead. We kept moving towards the dark horizon, and soon it was full night under the branches, and I could barely see the trunks along the banks. There was no moon, no stars to break the dark sky; the leaves were only a darker shadow against the charcoal-grey of it. The deer were tossing their heads, restive; they didn’t like it here, either, I could tell, and I didn’t think they cared one way or another who was in the sleigh they were pulling. The frozen river kept going on into the dark, vanishing away up ahead.
“All right, turn around,” I said finally, giving up, and Shofer turned their heads quickly, with enormous relief. But I looked back one more time as he turned the sleigh, and saw them: two people appearing upon the bank of the river, looming out of the dark: two people wrapped in heavy furs, and one of them a queen.
* * *
Mirnatius didn’t even twitch when the cold finally drove me back through the mirror. I crept to the hearth as slowly as I could, and warmed myself at the fire, still watching him warily for any signs he might wake. His magic had made the bed into a setting for his own beauty, and even in sprawled unconsciousness he was a work of art. He sighed and shifted in his sleep, murmuring in faint unintelligible gasps, a bare arm flung out of the covers and his head turning to show the line of his neck, his lips parted.
I belonged in that bed with him, a bride afraid of ordinary things, of clumsiness and selfishness. They would have been enough to fear; I’d never imagined more than putting up with it, and finding ways outside the bedroom that I might be useful enough to earn respect, that priceless coin. But surely with such a beautiful husband I should have had the right to entertain a few wary hopes as well, for whatever it was that made women get themselves into the troubles I only overheard in whispers.
Instead that pearled shell held a monster that wanted to drink me up like a cup of good wine, drained to the dregs and put down empty, and I’d have to outwit it every day just to live. I wasn’t sure who was master and who was servant anymore, but that demon had put Mirnatius on his throne seven years ago, and fed him with magic power since, and he was plainly ready and willing to hand me over in payment, with only a few minor complaints about the inconvenience of tidying up whatever ruin it left behind of me, like the rags of his half-burned clothing discarded on the floor.
I threw the scraps onto the fire and slept a little by the hearth, fitfully. As soon as morning came, I got up and hurried into my nightgown as if I’d worn it all night, and then rang the bell so the servants came in at once. Mirnatius started awake, looking around himself wildly at the unexpected noise, but they were already in the room. I asked them to ready a bath and bring us breakfast, and for another to help me dress, so they began bustling around the bedchamber without leaving us alone together, and then asked my husband in sweet tones, “Did you sleep well, my lord?”
He stared at me with baffled indignation, but there were four people in the room. “Very well,” he said after a moment, without ever taking his eyes from me, and also, I could see, without thinking of what he was saying, and what it would mean to my position in his court when his servants told everyone that the tsar, so worryingly uninterested in the pleasures of the flesh, had definitely slept in his wife’s bedchamber instead of his own, and slept well.
I don’t imagine he thought much about maintaining the favor of his courtiers, since he could simply mesmerize them when they were inclined to disagree. He only preferred to ration their displeasure, not to waste too much of his demon-borrowed magic. But I needed every weapon I could get hold of, anything that might be of use, and so I climbed into the bed with him—he edged back from me a little, eyeing me sidelong—and when they brought the tray I poured his tea, which I had noticed he liked to take very sweet, and added several spoonfuls of cherries before I presented the glass to him. He looked alarmed after he tasted it, as though he thought that was magic, too.
He couldn’t say anything to me with all the servants there—and they weren’t going anywhere when there was such gossip to be gathered, since I had given them an excuse to stay. Especially not any of the serving-maids. Mirnatius had no clothes on, after the wreck the demon had made of them last night, and the covers slipped from his bare shoulders and lean chest. The girls all darted flirtatious looks at him when they thought I wasn’t looking at them, and took every excuse to hover near him. They might as well have saved the effort: he never took his eyes away from me, only took bites from my hands warily, and answered all my small conversation in kind, until the bath was filled, and then I got up and said, “I will go to prayers while you bathe, my lord,” and escaped.
But when I came out of the church this time, the sleigh was waiting in the courtyard with our baggage going onto it. “We’ll be on our way to Koron, my dove,” Mirnatius said to me in the hall, with narrowed eyes, and I had no choice: I was going to have to get into the sleigh alone with him and drive into the dark woods, and on to his palace, full of his own soldiers and courtiers.