with a frost-demon. But she nerved herself and stepped forward.

Sasha wrenched round, and Sergei rose to his feet, spry despite his years. The third man jerked upright, blinking. Vasya recognized him: Rodion Oslyabya, a brother of the Trinity Lavra.

Three monks, dirty from days on the road, camping in a clearing in the summer night. Painfully ordinary; they made the winter midnights at her back feel like a dream.

But it wasn’t. She had brought the two worlds together.

She didn’t know what would happen.

THE FIRST BROTHER ALEKSANDR saw of his sister was a slim figure with a bruised face. He blasphemed in his mind; he sheathed his sword, offered up prayers, and ran to her.

She was so thin. Every plane of her face was blade-sharp: a skull picked out with firelight. But she returned his embrace with strength, and when he looked at her he saw her lashes wet.

Perhaps he was weeping, too. “Marya said you were alive. I—Vasya

—I am sorry. Forgive me. I wanted to go find you. I—Varvara said you had gone beyond our reckoning, that you—”

She cut into this flow of words. “There is nothing to forgive.”

“The fire.”

Her face hardened. “It is over, brother. Both fires.”

“Where have you been? What happened to your face?”

She touched the scar across her cheekbone. “This is from the night the mob came for me in Moscow.”

Sasha bit his lip. Father Sergei broke in, his voice sharp. “There is a white horse there in the wood. And a—shadow.”

Sasha spun, his hand again going to the hilt of his sword. In the darkness, just touched by the edges of the firelight, stood a mare, white as the moon on a winter night.

“Yours?” Sasha said to his sister, and then he looked again. Beside the mare, the shadow was watching them.

Again, he put a hand to his sword-hilt.

“No,” said his sister. “You don’t need it, Sasha.”

The shadow, Sasha realized, was a man. A man whose eyes were two points of light, colorless as water. Not a man. A monster.

He drew his sword. “Who are you?”

MOROZKO MADE NO ANSWER, but Vasya could feel the anger in him. He and the monks were natural enemies.

Catching her brother’s eye, she saw with an unpleasant feeling that Sasha’s fury wasn’t just the impersonal disdain of a monk for a devil.

“Vasya, do you know this—creature?”

Vasya opened her mouth, but Morozko stepped into the light and spoke first. “I marked her from her childhood,” he said coolly. “Took her into my own house, bound her to me with ancient magic, and put her on the road to Moscow.”

Vasya glared wordlessly at Morozko. Her brother’s disdain was obviously not one-sided. Of all the things he might have said to Sasha first.

“Vasya,” Sasha said. “Whatever he has done to you—”

Vasya cut him off. “It doesn’t matter. I have ridden across Rus’

dressed as a boy; I have walked alone into darkness and come out alive. It is too late for your scruples. Now—”

“I am your brother,” said Sasha. “It concerns me; it concerns every man in our family that this—”

“You left us when I was a child!” she interrupted. “You have given yourself first to your religion and second to your Grand Prince. My life and my fate lie beyond your judgment.”

Rodion broke in, bristling. “We are men of God,” he said. “That is a devil. Surely nothing more needs to be said?”

“I think,” said Sergei, “that a little more must be said.” He did not speak loudly, but everyone turned to him.

“My daughter,” said Sergei calmly, “we will hear your tale from the beginning.”

THEY SAT DOWN AROUND the fire. Rodion and Sasha did not sheathe their swords. Morozko did not sit at all; he paced, restless, as though he did not know which he disliked more: the monks and their hostile firelight or the hot summer darkness.

Vasya told the entire story, or the parts of it she could. She was hoarse by the end. Morozko did not speak; she got the impression that it was taking all his concentration not to disappear. Her touch might have helped, or her blood, but her brother kept a brooding eye on the frost-demon, and she thought it better not to provoke him.

She kept her arms around her knees.

When her voice wound raggedly to a halt, Sergei said, “You have not told us everything.”

“No,” said Vasya. “There are things that have no words. But I have spoken the truth.”

Sergei was silent. Sasha’s hand still toyed with the hilt of his sword. The fire was dying; Morozko seemed paradoxically more real in the faint red glow than he had in the full light of flames. Sasha and Rodion looked at him with open hostility. To Vasya it seemed suddenly that her hope was a foolish one; that it was impossible that these two powers would make common cause. Trying to put all her conviction into her voice, she said, “There is evil walking free in Moscow. We must face it together, or we will fall.”

The monks were silent.

Then, slowly, Sergei said, “If there is an evil creature in Moscow, then what is to be done, my daughter?”

Vasya felt a stir of hope. Rodion made a sound of protest, but Sergei raised a hand, silencing him.

“The Bear cannot be slain,” said Vasya. “But he can be bound.” She told them all she knew of the golden bridle.

“We found it,” said Sasha, breaking in unexpectedly. “In the ruin of the burned stable the night—the night of—”

“Yes,” said Vasya swiftly. “That night. Where is it now?”

“In Dmitrii’s treasure-room, if he hasn’t melted it for the gold,”