Nikolai just stared at her.
“That’s what I thought. The animals in your room are your final lesson. If you want any chance at winning the actual Game, you’d better get accustomed to blood on your soul.”
And with that, Galina unlatched the last lock and shoved Nikolai to the dangerous side of his bedroom door.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vika expected Bolshebnoie Duplo to be an enormous hollow of a tree, but there were no trees in this dusty place. In fact, there were no holes at all, only the sheer granite base of Tikho Mountain, the expansive, overcast sky, and the unnerving quiet of solitude. But after a three-day journey, her father swore this was where they needed to be.
Vika and Sergei had arrived at the mountain on horseback several hours ago, having spent the previous night at an inn in the nearby village of Oredezh. Galina and the other enchanter were nowhere to be seen. And the tsar, her father had explained, would be the last to arrive, for tsars did not wait for anyone.
If only Vika and Sergei could have evanesced here, it would have taken a lot less time. But Vika almost laughed aloud at herself for the thought. Evanescing took incredible amounts of power, energy, and concentration. You needed to dissolve yourself completely, then convince the wind to carry you to your destination—all while keeping the dissipated components of yourself in close proximity to one another—and finally, reassemble yourself and materialize. Vika had only ever succeeded in evanescing once, and she had moved a mere two feet before she panicked and put herself together again. She had spent the remainder of the day dead asleep on the banks of Preobrazhensky Creek.
Still, this journey to Bolshebnoie Duplo had been exhausting in its own way. Her father had insisted that Vika be shrouded from the minute they left the golden trees of Ovchinin Island, because they did not know at what point their path would cross that of his sister and her student. It was vital that Vika keep her identity from the other enchanter, for it would be harder for him or her to hurt Vika in the Game if the other enchanter didn’t know who she was and, therefore, at whom to aim.
So a translucent haze surrounded Vika, shifting her appearance to whatever the onlooker expected to see. To the innkeeper at Oredezh, who had assumed the woman accompanying Sergei was his wife, she had looked like a middle-aged woman, with country clothes and rough features to match her husband. To the stable boy who saddled their horses, she had seemed to be a young man, an obedient son to a grumbling father. And to herself, when she had passed by a lake reflecting her image, she had appeared wild and feral, her outside as out of control as her inside. Or perhaps this was how she’d actually looked.
Her father, on the other hand, looked the same as ever, although the bags under his eyes were darker and more pronounced. He had refused to allow Vika to use her own strength to maintain the shroud, insisting she needed to preserve it for the Game. Thus, Sergei had been maintaining the field of energy around her for three days, which was a prodigious stress that pushed the very limits of his abilities. In the privacy of their room at the inn last night, Vika had finally forced him to let go of the shroud so he could get some rest. Only then had he relented. But he’d reinstated the shroud as soon as he’d woken that morning.
Now the oath drew near. What would her opponent see of her appearance? Did he or she have a similar shroud? And if so, what would Vika see?
An hour before the ceremony, a pale yellow carriage appeared on the horizon. It didn’t bounce on the rocky soil leading up to Tikho Mountain, nor did it make any noise. As the carriage came closer, Vika noticed that its wheels didn’t actually touch the ground, although the hooves of the horses did. There was no coachman.
The horses slowed to a walk, and the carriage came to a stop. A series of steps unfolded with a flutter, like an accordion made of paper. Would they be sturdy enough to hold the weight of the occupants as they emerged?
The door cracked open, and a dainty heeled boot issued forth. Like the carriage wheels, its owner did not feel the need to acknowledge gravity. She hovered above the paper steps and floated down. Even then, her feet did not meet the ground.
Vika screwed up her face. She could levitate, too, of course, but it had never occurred to her to do it all the time. It seemed rather vain. Or arrogant. Actually, both.