He led me into a tunnel running parallel beside it, the deep crystalline walls breathing faint fog around us, full of the low groaning creaks of a frozen lake beginning to break up in spring. And then the path ended suddenly in another tunnel, its sides very smooth, and the river became wide running down it. He halted at the edge, staring down at the running water in misery and fear, and I said, “I can follow it from here! Go!”
I kicked off my shoes and plunged into the water and ran along the dark tunnel with the current, splashing along until it came out again inside the vast empty storeroom. I ran through it and into the other side and kept going in a scramble over the narrow, choked space left by the water and the crammed heap of silver coins, mounds of it dragged along by the water. The waterfall was roaring up ahead. Chernobog was a blurred capering shape on the other side of the mountain as I drew near, a shadow glowing red with coal. I managed to climb a final massive slope of coins that had built up in the tunnel to the crack in the mountain: a wide and terrible maw of broken glass that looked like it was lined with teeth that had been softened around the edges: seven years since Mirnatius was crowned, and the mountain had first broken.
I imagined an earthquake or reverberation shuddering through the Staryk kingdom, and the crack spreading to let summer’s heat come in. I could even see where they’d tried to patch it or block it, and the water had broken through again and again, widening the crack, each year draining away a little more strength that Chernobog could lap up from his seat upon the throne. So their king had fought off summer every year instead, as long as he could; he’d stolen more and more sunlight from us, trapped in gold, so he could summon blizzards and winter storms in fall and spring, and keep the river frozen, if he couldn’t close the mountain. And at last he’d come for me, a mortal girl who’d bragged that she could turn the silver that filled his treasure-rooms into an invincible hoard.
Silver coins were going out with the water like leaping fish, tumbling away between the shards, a treasure that was nothing next to the water itself: that clear cold water that was life, all their lives, draining out of the mountain to slake a thirst that had no end. Chernobog would drink up the whole mountain and all the Staryk in it, and then he’d go back to Lithvas and suck everyone there dry as well. Even if the Staryk king hadn’t told me, I would have known. I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn’t find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied.
The Staryk king was below and all his knights with him, on a ring of ice that the king was keeping frozen around Chernobog. They were fighting together, determined, and where their silver swords struck him, frost crawled away over his body. But they couldn’t put his fire out. He shrieked with rage, and the frost evaporated away into steam again as gouts of open flame erupted from the wounds. Yet they couldn’t get to the core of him. He’d grown too big, and he was still growing; he was still draining them even as they were trying to fight him. He cupped his hands beneath the falling water and brought gulps of it to his mouth, throwing his head back and laughing with horrible gurgles, and with every swallow he was growing a little more.
I gripped the edges of the crack carefully and leaned out and shouted, “Chernobog! Chernobog!” He looked up at me with eyes that glowed like molten metal in a forge, and I called down, “Chernobog, I give you my word! By high magic I’m going to close this mountain crack now, and shut you out for good!”
His eyes widened. “Never, never!” he shrieked up at me. “It is mine, mine, a well for me!” and he flung himself at the mountainside and began to claw his way up towards me.
I darted away from the opening and back into the tunnel, scrambling over the hills and valleys of silver, and I waited until he came peering into the dark at me. He laughed at me through the crack and struck the edges with his fist, shattering more of the mountain’s crystal wall to open it wide. “I will come in, I will drink my fill!”
He dragged himself through and came after me, gouts of steam rising around his hands and his belly as he squeezed down the tunnel. He put his face down into the stream and took in a great swallow, throwing his head back in pleasure to gulp it down, grinning at me as he let some of it run out the sides of his mouth and crawled onward. I kept backing away down the tunnel, until I’d climbed over the last hillock of silver and the mouth of the storeroom stood behind me. He was still coming, a red glow rising in the tunnel. The water was boiling and seething away around him, climbing the walls; only a river of silver coins left beneath him, sticking to his crawling body, his chest and belly and the front of his legs; silver coins that tarnished around the edges but didn’t melt, and he laughed again, the sound echoing, and raised a hand covered like armor in silver coins out of the water and wagged it at me jeering. “Staryk queen, mortal girl, did you think a chain of silver could stop me?”
“Not silver,” I said. “But a friend tells me you’re not very fond of the sun.” I put my hand down to touch the last heap of silver standing before me, the coins that were just barely cool enough to touch, the coins that were a part of that whole enormous hoard; and all of it together, every last one, I turned at once to shining gold.
He shrieked in horror as the silver changed around him. The coins beneath him began to melt at once, blurring into a single stream like drops of water running together, and as they melted, the tunnel filled with a blaze of sunlight escaping, so bright that my eyes watered. It shone through the crystal walls of the mountain, the whole of it illuminating, and he shrieked again and cringed behind his arms and started desperately trying to wriggle back down the tunnel to get away.
But everywhere the light touched him, the ash and coal of him began to break off, exposing molten flame beneath. The coins heaped on his head and shoulders began to melt in thick cobweb streams running all over him, letting still more sunlight out, and pools of gold were coating his belly. Whole great chunks of him came shearing off in the light, his limbs cracking. He was shrinking even as he struggled and wailed and dragged himself back down the tunnel. The water was still coming, running past my legs, but it wasn’t feeding him anymore: it was cooling the wide trail of dull molten metal he was leaving behind, erupting into clouds of steam that dewed the walls without ever reaching him.
I almost couldn’t see him through the mist anymore. He had already shriveled small enough to turn around, his arms and legs growing spindly and long as his body thinned, and breaking off in chunks, the ends splitting into new fingers and toes that almost at once also began to splinter and break off, going up into small bursts of flame that consumed them. He’d almost reached the crack up ahead: I heard his weeping and moaning as he saw the monstrous slope of golden coins piled up, but the tunnel around him was brighter than full noon—a hundred years of summer sun paid back all at once, coruscating through the depths of the mountain and coming back again, and he was shrinking with every moment.
He flung himself with desperation at the slope and went crawling frantically up towards the crack as the gold melted into an ocean of light around him. As he squirmed back out through the jagged hole, he plugged it up himself: the teeth of glass scraped enormous thick lumps of melted metal off his sides, more massive chunks of his body breaking away with them and bursting into open flames. The glass wall itself melted into incandescent glowing liquid, ropey strands dripping down over the crack, closing off the opening. Another great chunk broke away, and he fell out of the mountain shrieking, a small wriggling remnant of himself.
I was gulping for breath on a riverbed of dull metal, a few scattered lumps of gold that hadn’t quite melted stuck into it here and there, and water running like rain down all the tunnel walls. As the golden sunlight faded out of the mountain walls—escaping back to where it had come from, I hoped—the water running past me climbed up the slope and reached the crack in a great cloud of steam, and cooled the glass and metal solid again, sealing the mountain face in crystal entwined with lines of metal flecked with gold.
The air in the tunnel started growing colder rapidly, enough to chill the sweat that had for once broken out on my skin. The lines of water trickling down the tunnel walls were already freezing into solid white, and gleaming thin icicles stretched narrow points down from the ceiling as ice began to crust the river. I turned and had to struggle against the quickly freezing current back to the empty storeroom: by the time I reached it, all the river was a mass of jagged shards of ice sloshing around me, like broken pieces of glass themselves rising and falling in waves, and the doors of the great storeroom flung open suddenly and the Staryk king rushed in.
He reached down and caught me by the waist and lifted me out onto the bank. He was breathing hard; he’d lost some of his own sharp edges in the fighting, melted away to smooth curves with blue showing through beneath the surface, but new layers of thick ice were already building over his skin as quickly as over the surface of the river, and fresh gleaming icicle points were sprouting in clusters from his shoulders, frosted with white at first but already hardening to clear.
He stood there holding me by the waist a moment longer, his face almost stricken as he looked down the tunnel, at the lacework vein of metal binding the mountainside shut. Then he turned back and seized both my hands in his, gripping them tight as he stared down at me, a glitter of light caught in his eyes almost like the sunlight shining through the mountain walls. I stared back up at him, and for an instant I thought he would— Then he let go both my hands and stepped back and in a deep graceful courtesy went down on one knee before me and bowed his head, and said, “Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed.”
* * *
My poor Irina’s hair had fallen half loose, a great tangled mess, cold and wet and snarled black with the same dirt as under her broken fingernails, her bruised and frozen hands. I took the crown off her head and put it aside, and I washed her hands until the dirt and blood came free and they did not look bloodless anymore. She was drooping, her shoulders bent, and I was putting the bandages around her hands when she jerked her head suddenly up and looked at the mirror, her face pale.