“I was flying home,” Teddy Jo said. “It was dark. I saw a naked woman stumbling along the road below me. I landed to see if she was okay. She told me a monster was in the woods. I pulled out my sword and then I woke up in the mud, in the middle of the forest. A voice told me to bring you to the same spot within three days so a bargain could be struck.”
“What kind of voice?”
“Female. Very beautiful.”
“And what does this have to do with your punching Roman?”
“His god took it.”
“You think Chernobog took your sword?”
“I don’t think. I know. Look down.”
We’d been flying north toward the Chattahoochee National Forest and then over it. I locked my teeth and looked down.
A black stain spread below us. Massive trees, so dense you couldn’t see through their crowns, stood shoulder to shoulder, their leaves such a dark green they looked black. A narrow road snaked its way around the black woods.
“Did you talk to Roman about it?”
“Yeah. He says he doesn’t know why that happened.”
“If Chernobog wanted to talk to me, why didn’t he use Roman?”
“Nobody knows that either.”
“Why does he want to talk to me?”
“You keep asking these questions. I gave you all of the information I have.”
“Anything you can tell me about the woman?”
“She had blue hair.”
Ahead of us the enormous raven that was Roman swooped down.
“Hold on,” Teddy Jo said.
“I thought I’d throw my arms up like on a roller coaster.”
“Your funeral.”
“Better not be. I die, you might never get your sword back.”
We dived. Wind whistled past my ears. The ground rushed at us.
Below us, the raven twisted back into a human.
The ground hurtled toward me at an alarming speed.
We are all going to die . . .
Six feet above the grass I decided to take my chances. I jumped out of the swing—the ground punched my feet—and rolled upright.
Roman clapped.
“What the hell?” Teddy Jo asked, landing. “I would’ve set you down.”
Legs unbroken, arms unbroken, and best of all, solid ground under my feet.
“I’m okay.”
Roman laughed.
“Don’t laugh.”
“Can’t help it.” The smile slid off his face. “It might be the last time. Nothing good will come from your entering this forest. This isn’t a place where normal people are welcome.”
“I should be right at home, then.”
“I’m serious, Kate. Here the old powers rule. Elemental powers. It’s not too late to turn back.”
“It’s always too late,” I told him.
“Do you remember how to talk to the gods?”
“Don’t ask for anything, promise nothing, and accept no gifts.”
Roman sighed. “We shall go, then.” He headed into the woods. We followed, picking our way through the underbrush along a narrow trail.
“Why didn’t Chernobog tell you that he wanted to talk to me?” I asked. “It would’ve made things a lot simpler.”
“He did,” Roman said. “Sometimes he wants things and I talk him out of it. I thought we had agreed to let you be. You have enough on your plate.”
“Your god went around you,” Teddy Jo said.
“He did. I tried to tell him it’s a bad idea, I tried to tell Kate it’s a bad idea, and nobody listens to me. And so here we are.” He waved at the darkness in the woods.
“You didn’t try very hard to talk her out of it,” Teddy Jo said.
“I respect her,” Roman said. “She knows what she’s doing. If she says she wants to talk to my god, then so be it. Besides, if Chernobog wants to talk to you, he’ll find a way.”
Speaking of respect . . . “I have a bone to pick with you.”
“Oh?”
“Did you send my father a wedding invitation?”
“Of course I did.”
“Did you clear it with me?”
Roman bent an eyebrow at me. “You weren’t available.”
Around us black woods crowded the path: black trunks, black leaves, black roots. You’d never know it was noon and a few dozen feet above us, the world was bright and full of sunshine. Here darkness ruled. There was something primal about it. Something primitive and old. Things with narrow glowing eyes stared at us from the black brush. This forest gave me the creeps.
“My father called me, all offended on my behalf that the wedding dinner isn’t sufficiently feastlike.”
“Umm,” Roman said.
“Curran is also now offended because my father referred to him as a pauper.”
“Umm,” Roman offered.
“And then you called over to the Keep and offended the dress designers, so they hunted me down this morning and invaded my house.”
“You do need a dress.”
“You’re not a wedding planner, you’re a menace. Stop planning my wedding.”
“I’ll stop when you start.”
“There is nothing to plan.”
Roman turned to Teddy Jo on the trail next to him. “Do you see what I have to deal with?”
“What does this wedding look like in your head?” Teddy Jo asked me. “Is it like the family gets there and then this Russian shows up and marries you?”
“Pretty much.”
“No,” Teddy Jo said.
“It’s my wedding. It’s for me.”
“No, your wedding night is for you. The wedding is for everyone else.”
“I told her,” Roman said. “Weddings require preparation. It’s a significant, hopefully once-in-a-lifetime event where you swear to love and cherish another person, not casually but through thick and thin. It’s a promise that is meant to be kept forever. Honestly, Kate, do you want to get married? It’s a serious question.”
I sighed. “I want to get married. And maybe I would like to be there to pick the flowers and choose the dress and select the menu. But war is coming. My future is on fire and I have to put it out if I hope to have any future left . . .”
They weren’t in front of me anymore.
I clamped my mouth shut. The two men had disappeared. I stood alone. Ahead of me the trail nearly vanished too, all but melted into a bog about fifty feet wide. On both sides, black water slicked blacker mud. Massive black trees bordered the bog, their branches braiding high above me like the fingers of two hands interlaced into a single fist.
Apparently, Chernobog wanted privacy for this conversation. Calling for either Roman or Teddy Jo would do no good. This was his forest and he made this happen. I could stand here, at the edge of the bog, or I could move forward and get on with it.
I stepped into the mud. It squelched under my weight with a wet sucking noise. Step, another step, a few more . . .
Something watched me from the depths of the woods. My skin felt too tight from the pressure of its gaze.
When alone in a dark forest waiting for an audience with an evil god, the most prudent course of action is to be quiet and wait. “Prudent” wasn’t one of my favorite words.
“Hello? I’ve come to borrow a cup of sugar. Anybody? Perhaps there is an old woman with a house made of candy who could help me?”
“Marrying for love isn’t wise.”
The voice came from somewhere to the left. Melodious, but not soft, definitely female and charged with a promise of hidden power. Something told me that hearing her scream would end very badly for me.
I stopped and pivoted toward the voice.
“Marry for safety. Marry for power. But only fools marry for love.”
When a strange v
oice talks to you in the black woods, only idiots answer.
I was that idiot. “Thank you, counselor. How much do I owe you for this session?”
Mud squelched. Small twigs broke with dry snaps. Something moved behind the trees, on the very edge of my vision. Something dark and very large.
“Love fades. Love is beauty, youth, and good health. Love is sharing a moment in time. Bodies fatten, sag, and wrinkle.”
And she kept going with her spiel. That’s the trouble with ancient gods. No sense of humor.
A long sinuous body slithered behind the trees, enormous, taller than me, wide like a dump truck. It didn’t end; more and more of it kept coming, sliding through the bog. The voice was on the left, the slithering darkness on the right.
“Youth passes you by, and before you know it, the two of you are walking two different roads. Then comes pain, disappointment, and often betrayal.”
“Fascinating,” I said. “Is there a point to this, or did you go through the trouble of stealing Thanatos’s sword to discuss my impending marriage?”
Brush rustled. The massive creature slid behind me, circling the rim of the bog. Peachy. Just peachy.
I turned to follow its movement. A large bird sat on a thick tree branch above me and to the left. Her long feathers draped down into a silky plumage that shifted between indigo, blue, and black. Her head was human with a shockingly beautiful face framed by a mane of blue hair. A gold crown sat on her head. Her chest was human too, with perfectly formed breasts.
Sirin.
I stood perfectly still.
Of all the mythological birds in the Slavic legends, Sirin was the most dangerous. Like Veles, the god who was her father, she was born from magic and the very essence of nature and life, the arterial blood of existence, unbridled, uncontrollable, and as unpredictable as the weather. Sirin, burevestnik, the storm bringer. And seeing her always meant one thing: many people would die.
She looked at me with big blue eyes.
“Hello, burevestnik,” I said. “Will there be a natural disaster or a battle in my future?”
She laughed, raising her wings, and peeked at me through the gap. “A battle. A bloody battle.”
The dark thing behind her slithered forward. A huge black beak came into the light, followed by a reptilian face the size of a car, its obsidian scales gleaming slightly. Two tentacles streamed from above its beak, like the mustache of its Chinese counterpart.
Aspid. One of Chernobog’s dragons. His tail was still lost in the woods somewhere behind me. He had to be hundreds of feet long. All of my skill with the sword wouldn’t be able to stop it. This was the old magic. The type of magic that existed when my father was young.
Aspid stared at me with big golden eyes, his head rising. Massive paws with claws as big as me sank into the black mud of the bog. I saw the beginnings of folded wings draped over his shoulders, the array of emerald, sapphire, and diamond scales on their surface catching what little light there was.
Sirin smiled, fluttering her wings. Veles must’ve lent his bird-daughter to Chernobog. They were related by marriage.
“Why did you come?” Sirin asked.
Honesty was usually the best policy. “Because my friend was in trouble.”
“You’re still human enough to have friends,” Sirin said. “Perhaps we will bargain with you after all.”
“What do I have to do to get the flaming sword back and walk out of these woods with Thanatos and Roman unharmed?”
“Roman has nothing to fear here,” Sirin said.
I kept my mouth shut. I had already asked my question. The less I spoke, the better it was for my health.
“Will you bargain with us, Daughter of Nimrod?” Sirin asked.
Bargain with the God of Destruction and Absolute Evil or the giant dragon eats you. No pressure. “I’ll hear you out.”
The darkness binding the trees parted. Magic swelled, like a cold black wave about to drown me. Roman emerged from the bog and moved toward me. The staff in his hand turned into a huge black sword. His eyes glowed with white, so bright his irises were invisible in the whiteness. A dark crown rested on his brow; its tall spikes, shaped like razor-sharp blades, stretched a foot above Roman’s head.
The volhv stopped before me.
Whatever made Roman himself was no longer there. The creature that stood in front of me wasn’t Roman. It wasn’t even human.
Chernobog didn’t manifest. He possessed and his priest was his willing vessel.
Someone had to speak first. Clearly, he wasn’t going to.
“Why am I here?”
Aspid slithered forward and coiled around me.
“You will fight a battle,” Roman-Chernobog said in a voice that was at once deep and sibilant, the kind of voice that should’ve belonged to Aspid, who was twisting his enormous body around me. The magic in that voice chilled me to the bone. “Let the slaughter be in my name and I will return the sword and the Greek to you.”
Careful. That way lay dragons. Literally. “What benefit would you derive from this?”
“Power.”
Okay. “Could you be more specific?”
Aspid’s coils drew tighter, bumping my back. I pushed at the massive scales with my hand. “Stop. I’m trying to speak to your father. I’m not going to agree to anything until I understand the nature of the bargain.”
“People worship lighter gods because of the gifts they hope to receive,” Sirin said from her perch. “They worship darker gods because of fear. For that fear to stay alive there must be punishment when respect is lacking. But one cannot punish when one’s followers are few. There is an imbalance.”
Now it made sense. Roman had complained before that he wasn’t invited to any namings, births, or weddings, but the volhvs of Belobog and other lighter gods were. Gods like Chernobog and Veles were getting the shorter end of the stick. That created an imbalance, one that Chernobog felt pressure to correct.
In ancient times Chernobog wasn’t so much worshipped as appeased, because if the ancient Slavs forgot the appeasement, he would remind them. Atlanta was a hub and it drew people from all over the South, but even so, the population of Slavic pagans was too small for any effective punishment. If he decimated them, it would take even longer for the balance of power to be restored. He’d be shooting himself in the foot.
But if the battle was dedicated to him, each death would boost his power. That was a hell of a thing to promise.
“Do you understand, human?” Sirin asked.
“Yes. I’m thinking. Do the souls of the dead killed in Chernobog’s name belong to him?”
“I lay no claim to the souls,” Roman-Chernobog said.
“How would this dedication take place?”
“My volhv will consecrate the field to me.”
I looked at Sirin. “What is Veles’s role in this?”
“Veles lays no claim to the field or lives lost on it. For now.”
I faced Roman-Chernobog. “If we consecrate the field to you, every death upon it becomes a human sacrifice.”
Sirin snapped her wings. Aspid opened his beak, his golden eyes staring at me. Apparently, the fact that I wasn’t a complete idiot was really surprising.
There was no way out. If I declined the bargain, neither I nor Teddy Jo would get out of this swamp. If I died, my father would take the city and crush it.
If I took the bargain, I’d be making a business arrangement with the God of Evil. No good ever came from making deals like that. No good ever came from making deals with gods, period. Especially when what he was asking for wasn’t mine to grant.
What should I do? How do I make the best of this mess? I wished I could’ve asked Roman for advice, but I highly doubted Chernobog would let me do that and even if he did, there was a pretty obvious conflict of interest.
“What if the
re is no battle?”
“There will be a battle,” Sirin said. “First, you will fight for your lover. If you win, you will fight for your heir. You will not survive. One of these battles will end you.”
“Maybe I’ll patch things up with my father.”
“You will not,” Sirin said. “Beware, Daughter of Nimrod. I have seen your death and it is a horror you cannot imagine.”
Awesome.
“Decide,” Roman-Chernobog said.
I would need ammunition against my father. The Witch Oracle had foreseen the battle, Sirin had foreseen the battle, so the battle would be happening. Curran would die. Atlanta would burn.
Consecrating the ground to Chernobog and feeding him the power of all those deaths . . . There was no darker darkness than this dragon winding around me. This would have far-reaching consequences. There hadn’t been a large-scale human sacrifice in the world for years. I would be opening a door that so many good people had fought to keep closed. I would be giving Chernobog a foothold in Atlanta.
But I’d be an idiot to turn down his offer. I wouldn’t even make it out of the swamp. It was my responsibility to defend the people in my land. It was my burden. I had to do whatever I could to make them safe. My father was an immediate danger. Chernobog was a distant, vague future threat. I didn’t need anyone’s permission. I could do it.
“Decide,” Roman-Chernobog repeated.
I raised my head and looked the god in the eye. “No.”
Aspid hissed.
“You’re asking me for something not in my power to give. I guard the land. I do not own it and I do not own its people. They pray to their own gods.”
“Then you die,” Roman-Chernobog said.
“If you kill me, my father will take over the city and all the lands around it. He doesn’t suffer any competition to his power. The witches and volhvs are afraid of him and oppose him. He knows this. Right now, your worshippers live in the land I guard. I don’t make any demands on them. They worship whoever they choose. Once my father comes through, that will be over. Most of those who honor you will die in that battle. Those who survive will be punished and enslaved for opposing my father. If you kill me, nobody in Atlanta will be left to say your name.” I looked at Sirin. “Tell him.”