“How do you feel now?”
“I feel the strength of ten men within me.”
Suddenly the old man was there no more. A glorious creature—half-woman, half-eagle— stood before him and sang to him. Thus were the Sirin bound forever to their beloved, and while the bond lasted, the earth gave fruit, the mountains gave pure springs, and the Heights reached down to earth in a harmony of endless song.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard such utter nonsense,” muttered the hag. “You expect to win with that story? It’s a mishmash of several battered horses. But you knew that already. And who ever heard of a Sirin who could transfigure?”
Tarin winked at her and smiled. “Poetic license.”
With a loud harrumph, the hag sat on a tree stump and began her story.
The Curious Princess
You have probably heard the horrible story of the prince and the raven. I hate that story. It ignores all the important details and never considers the Raven’s point of view. Well, I’ll tell you the true end of that story. As you probably already know, after the Raven had his fun with the prince, the Sirin caught the Raven and imprisoned him in Vasyllia.
The prince came home and—somehow getting over the grief of killing his own beloved—married and had a daughter. She must have inherited some of his restlessness, because she could not be prevailed upon to stay in any one place for more than a few minutes. There was too much to be seen! She would disappear from the palace to wander around the city, the fields, the wild forests. The prince finally had enough of his little girl’s wanderlust, and he ordered that she be confined to the palace.
Unfortunately for him, the palace itself was an endless labyrinth of discoveries, especially in the dungeons. There, the mountain itself bled into the palace, and some of the rooms were hardly distinguishable from caves. Most were empty, but some had fascinating treasures—ancient tapestries, old rotted chests with moldy drapery and robes woven with dulling gold, drafty armories with rusted swords and mail from the forgotten days of Lassar. The princess was nearly in constant ecstasies.
But her curiosity was insatiable. Naturally, there was a single door that would not open, no matter how hard she pushed. She could not simply ask someone to open it for her. Soon all other rooms lost their charm. She would come to this old wooden door and sit in front of it, staring.
One evening, she was caught prowling the dungeons and brought to her father. He looked grave, but not angry. He didn’t even scold her. Instead, he put her on his lap and petted her hair and spoke softly to her.
“You must not seek beyond that door, my dear. There is great evil there. It must never be let out, or many will die.”
Well, so much for the prince’s wisdom. Anyone knows that for a child as inquisitive as that, a prohibition is little more than an invitation. But the problem was still all too real: how to open the door? She decided to wait. Despite her impatient curiosity, she knew very well that if she really wanted something, there would always be a way to get it. She was a prince’s daughter, after all.
So she waited. Every day she would spend at least an hour in front of the locked door, but no idea presented itself on how to open it. Finally, her patience was rewarded. One late evening, a hunchbacked and very deaf servant carried a bucket of water right up to the forbidden door. She managed to hide before he saw her. To her delight, he pulled out a set of keys bigger than his head and opened the door. To her even greater delight, he walked in and left the door open. She sneaked in behind him.
They entered a long passage that ended in another shut door of heavy black iron, bolted in ten places with locks and mechanisms that made her head spin as the servant deftly worked them open. Another passage followed, faintly illumined by torches, smelling unpleasantly of pitch and tar. This passage ended in a huge stone. Pushing with all his might, the servant managed to budge it enough to open a small enough chink to walk through. She followed.
The room was so dark, she had no trouble hiding. Barely illumined by the torches in the hallway, the old man poured the contents of his bucket into a well in the center of the room, then wiped his forehead with his arm. To her chagrin, he immediately walked out and pushed the stone back into the doorway. Blackness fell. She was shut in.
Eventually, she noticed that there was a thin slit in the wall high above her. As her eyes adjusted to the faint light, she began to look around. It was obviously a dungeon. Old chains lay on the ground and hung from rusty rings on the wall. Then she saw him and nearly jumped out of her skin. He was a wretched old man, nary a hair on his head, a wispy white beard barely hanging from a receding chin. There was nothing but skin on his bones. She had never seen such a pathetic creature.
“Water…” he gasped. “Please, give me some of that water.”
There was a large bucket next to the well, too far for him to reach. How terrible, she thought. That horrid servant brought in the water just to torture the old man.
“You poor thing,” she said. She was, for all her curiosity, rather a soft-hearted girl. “Of course I’ll give you some water.”
And so she did. At first she was a little put off at how greedily he drank it, bucketful after bucketful. She was a little more unnerved by how his eyes kept getting redder and redder. It’s only torchlight, she said to herself. By the fifth bucketful, she was afraid. The bony old man was now a huge, beastly creature with burning eyes. He looked at her with his head cocked to one side. He’s going to eat me, she thought, unable to move for sheer terror.
Instead, he hurled himself at the stone door and pounded it to dust. He tore off the second door of iron in one blow. He shattered the third door of wood to splinters.
The Raven turned back once more and looked at the princess. He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile at all. She screamed.
Thus, the Raven escaped his unjust imprisonment and fled Vasyllia to hide and gather his strength for a final, devastating retribution.
“Well, Tarin? Didn’t expect me to have a story that good in my skirts, did you?”
“Tut, tut.” He winked at her. “Our judges have yet to make their choice.”
The Alkonist were already conferring under the drowned girl’s tree, since it seemed she refused—or was unable— to come down. Voran could not hear what they were saying, or if they were speaking in a human language at all. There were far too many squeaks, burbles, clicks, and whoops for normal speech. Finally, they seemed to agree, though the drowned girl looked morose again. Voran hoped that meant she would not be allowed to tickle him to death.
“We judge in favor of Tarin,” said the cat. “Hag, you must leave the Lows immediately. Since you seem to like the Raven so much, we suggest you join him. He’s in Vasyllia.”
Voran froze in place. The Raven was already in Vasyllia? Could that be possible?
The spark in the hag’s eyes spewed into angry flames. Starting with a low rumble, she shrieked, louder and louder until Voran thought his ears would burst. Her hair stood on end like a writhing mass of snakes. She pulled a jagged knife out of nowhere and lunged at Voran, arm upraised. She was a mere breath from plunging the knife into his heart, when she jerked backward as though someone threw a rope around her neck and pulled it hard. Voran looked at Tarin, thinking he had done it, but the old man stood a little way off, holding his knit cap to his head, staring up at a lamentation of migrating swans. Lesnik was once more the size of a tree, and one hand was outstretched toward the hag.
“Let me go!” she screamed and thrashed wildly as she began to float above the ground.
“The power of words can turn iron to gold, or bind fetters as fast as the roots of the elm,” said the giant Lesnik. “You know the power of incantation, and yet you still defy it. Your kind was always too smart for your own good. Now pay the price.”
She began to hiss. Wider and wider grew her eyes, louder and more insistent grew the hissing. A snake’s forked tongue darted out of her still human mouth. Voran turned away to find Tarin next to him, looking at him intently.
“What’s happening to her?” asked Voran.
“Focus,” commanded Tarin. He pulled out an old sword from his robe-skirts. It was only then that Voran noticed the ropy muscle of the man’s arm. Tarin was an old warrior; the signs were all there. “Stay alert,” he said and gave him the sword.
Voran felt a gust of wind from the direction of the hag. He turned to face her and nearly fell over from the shock. Instead of a hag, he saw two dancing reptilian heads attached to a serpent body as big as a longboat. She flapped two bat-like arms and flew up. One of the heads lunged at him and hot fangs slashed at his neck as he rolled away. Fear paralyzed him. He shook from exhaustion and lack of food. His mind screamed at him—Run! Run! Every joint of the serpent’s wings was edged with a claw as long as a dagger. Even her tail was razor-sharp.
