“It is a tomb,” he said. We had reached the bottom of the stairs, coming into a small round room. The very air seemed thicker. The writing came off one wall of the stairwell, continued all around it in an unbroken line that circled to the opposite side, went up the wall in a tall curve that drew an arch, and then came back and went up the other side of stairs. There was a small patch of lighter stone inside the arch, towards the bottom — as though the rest of the wall had been built, and then had been closed up afterwards. It looked perhaps the size for a man to crawl through.
“Is — is someone still buried here?” I asked, timidly. My voice came out hushed.
“Yes,” the Dragon said. “But even kings don’t object to sharing once they’re dead. Listen to me now,” he said, turning to me. “I’m not going to teach you the spell to walk through the wall. When you want to see her, I’ll take you through myself. If you try to touch her, if you let her come in arm’s reach of you, I’ll take you out again at once. Now lay on your protections, if you insist on doing this.”
I lit the small handful of pine needles on the floor and made the chant, putting my face in their smoke, and then I put my hand in his, and let him draw me through the wall.
He’d made me fear the worst: Kasia as tormented as Jerzy, foaming-mouthed and tearing at her own skin; Kasia full of those slithering corrupted shadows, eating away at everything inside her. I was prepared for anything; I braced myself. But when he brought me through the wall, she was only sitting huddled and small in the corner on a thin pallet, her arms around her knees. There was a plate of food and water on the floor next to her, and she’d eaten and drunk; she’d washed her face, her hair was neatly plaited. She looked tired and afraid, but still herself, and she struggled up to her feet and came to me, holding out her hands. “Nieshka,” she said. “Nieshka, you found me.”
“No closer,” the Dragon said flatly, and added, “Valur polzhys,” and a sudden line of hot flame leapt up across the floor between us: I’d been reaching towards her without being able to help it.
I dropped my hands to my sides and clenched them into fists — and Kasia stepped back, too, staying behind the fire; she nodded obediently to the Dragon. I stood staring at her, helplessly, full of involuntary hope. “Are you—” I said, and my voice choked in my throat.
“I don’t know,” Kasia said, her voice trembling. “I don’t — remember. Not anything after they took me into the Wood. They took me into the Wood and they — they—” She stopped, her mouth open a little. There was horror in her eyes, the same horror I’d felt when I’d found her in the tree, buried beneath the skin.
I had to stop myself reaching out to her. I was in the Wood again myself, seeing her blind, choked face, her pleading hands. “Don’t speak of it,” I said, thick and miserable. I felt a surge of anger at the Dragon for holding me back this long. I had already made plans in my head: I would use Jaga’s spell to find where that corruption had taken root in her; then I would ask the Dragon to show me the purging spells he’d used on me. I would look through Jaga’s book and find others like it, and drive it out of her. “Don’t think of it yet, just tell me, how do you feel? Are you — sick, or cold—”
I finally looked around at the room itself. The walls were of that same polished bone-white marble, and in a deep niche at the back a heavy stone box lay, longer than the height of a man, carved along the top in the same letters and other designs on the sides: tall flowering trees and vines curling over each other. A single blue flame burned on top of it, and air flowed in from a thin slit in the wall. It was a beautiful room, but utterly cold; it wasn’t a place for any living thing. “We can’t keep her here,” I said to the Dragon fiercely, even as he shook his head. “She needs sun, and fresh air — we can lock her into my room instead—”
“Better here than the Wood!” Kasia said. “Nieshka, please tell me, is my mother all right? She tried to follow the walkers — I was afraid they’d take her, too.”
“Yes,” I said, wiping my face, taking a deep breath. “She’s all right. She’s worried for you — she’s so worried. I’ll tell her you’re all right—”
“Can I write her a letter?” Kasia asked.
“No,” the Dragon said, and I wheeled on him.
“We can give her a stub of pencil and some paper!” I said angrily. “It’s not too much to ask.”
His face was bleak. “You aren’t this much a fool,” he said to me. “Do you think she was buried in a heart-tree for a night and a day and came out talking to you, ordinarily?”
I stopped, silent, afraid. Jaga’s rot-finding spell hovered on my lips. I opened my mouth to cast it — but it was Kasia. It was my own Kasia, who I knew better than anyone in the world. I looked at her and she looked back at me, unhappy and afraid, but refusing to weep or cower. It was her. “They put her in the tree,” I said. “They saved her for it, and I brought her out before it got a hold—”
“No,” he said flatly, and I glared at him and turned back to her. She smiled at me anyway, a struggling valiant smile.
“It’s all right, Nieshka,” she said. “As long as Mama’s all right. What—” She swallowed. “What’s to happen to me?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. “I’ll find a way to cleanse you,” I said, half-desperate, and didn’t look at the Dragon. “I’ll find a spell to be sure you’re all right—” but those were just words. I didn’t know how I could ever prove to the Dragon that Kasia was well. He plainly didn’t want to be convinced. And if I couldn’t persuade him somehow, he would keep Kasia down here the rest of her life if need be, entombed with this ancient king and without a scrap of sunlight — never to see anyone she loved, never to live at all. He was as great a danger to Kasia as the Wood — he hadn’t wanted me to rescue her at all.
And even before then, it occurred to me in a flash of bitterness, he had meant to steal her for himself — he’d meant to take her as much as the Wood had, to devour her in his own way. He hadn’t cared about uprooting her life before, making her a prisoner in a tower, only to serve him — why would he care now, why would he ever risk letting her out?
He stood a few steps behind me, farther from the fire and from Kasia. His face was closed, yielding nothing, his thin mouth pressed hard. I looked away and tried to smooth out my face and hide my thoughts. If I could find a spell to let me pass through the wall, I would only have to find a way to evade his notice. I could try and put a spell of sleep on him, or I could put something in his cup with his dinner: Wormwood brewed with yew berries, cook the juice down to a paste, put in three drops of blood and speak an incantation, and it will make a quick poison with no taste—
The sudden sharp pungent smell of burning pine needles came back into my nose, and the thought took on a strange bitter edge that made the wrongness of it leap out. I flinched away from it, startled, and I took a step back from the line of fire, trembling. On the other side, Kasia was waiting for me to speak: her face resolute, clear-eyed, full of trust and love and gratitude — and a little fear and worry, but nothing but ordinary human feeling. I looked at her, and she looked back at me anxiously, still herself. But I couldn’t speak. The smell of pine was still in my mouth, and my eyes stung with smoke.
“Nieshka?” Kasia said, her voice wavering with growing fear. I still said nothing. She was staring at me across the line of fire, and her face through the haze seemed to be first smiling and then unhappy, her mouth trembling through one shape and another, trying — trying different expressions. I took another step back, and it grew worse. Her head tilted, eyes fixed on my face, widening a little. She shifted her weight, a different stance. “Nieshka,” she said, not sounding afraid anymore, only confident and warm, “it’s all right. I know you’ll help me.”