SHE LET HERSELF BE SWEPT downstream until she caught a rock in the middle and clung there, gasping.

“River-king!” she shouted. “I want to talk to you.”

The water rushed along, with broken trees borne on its flood. She had to clamber higher on her rock to avoid a huge limb spinning toward her in the current.

The vodianoy popped out of the water scarce an arm’s length away.

His grinning mouth was filled with needle-sharp teeth, his skin thick with slime and river muck. Water ran like diamonds down his warty skin and foamed and boiled around him. He opened his spine-toothed mouth and roared at her.

This is when I’m supposed to scream, Vasya thought. Then he laughs—and I cry out in despair, believing in my own death, and that is when he sinks his teeth into me and drags me down.

That was how chyerti killed people, by making them believe they were doomed.

Vasya spoke as composedly as one could, clinging to a rock in a current. “Forgive my intrusion.”

It is not easy to startle the river-king. His gaping mouth closed abruptly. “Who are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Vasya. “Why were you trying to kill these men?” The water surged, struck her in the face. She spat it out, wiped water from her eyes, hitched herself a little higher.

She only knew where the river-king was by his black bulk against the sky, the shine of his eyes. “I wasn’t,” he said.

Her arms had begun to shake. She cursed her lingering weakness.

“No?” she demanded, breathless.

“The silver,” he said. “I was to drown the silver.”

“Silver? Why?”

“The Bear desired it of me.”

“What do chyerti care for men’s silver?” she panted.

“I know not. I only know the Bear bid me to do it.”

“Very well,” said Vasya. “It is done now. Will you quiet the water, river-king?”

The vodianoy rumbled with displeasure. “Why? Those men with their dust and their horses and their filth fouled my river. They left no offering, no acknowledgment. Better they drown with their silver.”

“No,” she said. “Men and chyerti can share this world.”

“We cannot!” snapped the vodianoy. “They will not stop—the bells will not stop, the cutting of trees and the fouling of water, and the forgetting will not stop until there are none of us left.”

“We can, ” she insisted. “I see you. You will not fade.”

“You are not enough.” The black lips had pulled back again, revealing the needles of his teeth. “And the Bear is stronger than you.”

“The Bear is not here,” said Vasya. “I am here and you will not kill these men. Quiet the water!”

The vodianoy only hissed, mouth opening wide. Vasya did not recoil, but reached out a scraped hand and touched his warty face.

She said, “Listen to me and be at peace, river-king.” The vodianoy felt like living water, cold and silken and alive under her hand. She committed the texture of his skin to memory.

He shrank away. His mouth closed. “Must it be so?” he asked her, in a different voice. He sounded suddenly afraid. But beneath it was a thread of agonized hope. Vasya thought of what her great-grandmother had said, that the chyerti didn’t really wish to fight, at all.

Vasya took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “It must.”

“Then I will remember,” said the vodianoy. The raging force of the current slacked. Vasya drew a relieved breath. “You must also remember—sea-maiden.” The vodianoy sank gurgling beneath the water and vanished before she could ask him why he called her that.

The level of the river began to drop. By the time Vasya dragged herself ashore, it was only muddy creek again.

The man that she had rescued was standing on the bank when she came wading out. She was bedraggled, panting and shivering, but at least she wasn’t sleepy. She jerked to a halt when she saw him waiting, quelled a startled impulse to flee.

He raised his hands. “Do not be afraid, boy. You saved my life.”

Vasya didn’t speak. She didn’t trust him. But the water was at her back, the night, the forest, the Midnight-road. All promised refuge.

She was afraid of the man with an instinctive fear, but it wasn’t like Moscow, where walls hemmed her in. So she stood fast and said, “If you are grateful, Gospodin, then tell me your name and your purpose here.”

He stared. Vasya realized belatedly that he had thought she was a peasant boy but that she didn’t sound like one.

“I suppose it is of no matter now,” he said after a grim silence. “I am called Vladimir Andreevich, the Prince of Serpukhov. I, with my men, was to take a tribute of silver to Sarai, to the puppet-khan and his temnik Mamai. For Mamai has mustered an army and will not disperse it until he has his tax. But now the silver is gone.”

Her brother-in-law, sent by Dmitrii on an errand meant to avert a war, now thwarted. Vasya understood why affinity had brought her here; knew also why the Bear had wanted to drown the silver. Why bring down Dmitrii himself when he could get Tatars to do it?

Perhaps the silver could be found. But not in darkness. Could she force the vodianoy to retrieve it? She hesitated between the forest and the water.

Vladimir was considering her, narrow-eyed. “Who are you?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she assured him with perfect honesty.

His sharp gray eyes took in the fading cuts and bruises on her face.

“I mean you no harm,” he said. “Wherever you ran away from—I won’t send you back. Would you like something to eat?”

The unexpected kindness almost drove tears from her; she realized how bewildered and frightened she had been, and still was. But she had no time for tears.

“No,” she said. “I thank you.” She had decided. To end the Bear’s mischief once and for all, she needed the winter-king.

So she fled, a wraith in the darkness.

15.

Farther, Stranger Countries

THE MOON WAS HANGING NEAR the horizon and it was still endless, sapping night. Vasya was barefoot, and now she was cold.

Ded Grib popped out from behind a stump, clutching Vasya’s basket. He looked outraged. “You are wet, ” he said. “And you are lucky I kept you in sight. What if you and I and the horse had all gone into different midnights? You would have been lost.”