“Two months without sleeping?” Wren furrowed her brow as she tried to remember Omar or Gudrun ever telling her about how much sleep a person needed. “And you can do that? Not sleep?”
The old witch grinned out at the dark outlines of Constantia, and in the distance the faint screams and cries of mothers and fathers and children echoed in the streets. “It is possible for me to go on living without sleep. But I suppose I have paid a price for that, too. The nightmares that taunt me at the borders of my sleep, the fears that I ran away from…” The old woman shook her head. “…they found me all the same. All of the horrors that I could ever imagine, all of the torments my tired head could conjure up, are here.” She placed her hand over her eyes for a moment.
Wren gaped. “You’re having nightmares? While you’re awake?”
Yaga nodded. As she leaned forward, her heavy bracelets clanked around her wrists.
The girl watched the woman’s unsteady hands clutching the railing of the balcony. “And your rinegold, I mean, your sun-steel bracelets, they’re always on your arms, and you, you’re always having nightmares. It is you. Your whole body is resonating with fear and sorrow, and it’s all flying out into the world through the aether.”
Yaga said nothing.
“You’re waking the dead.”
Yaga grinned.
“You have to stop.”
“I can’t stop!” Yaga snarled and held up one clawing hand as though poised to tear her own heart from her chest. “The nightmares are never-ending. I can see them now. Koschei burning on a pyre, his face reduced to melted black wax around his white, staring eyes. Koschei on the rack, his bones cracking, his breast bursting. Koschei with a nest of vipers in his bowels, wriggling out through his skin and shredding his flesh with their fangs. My boy, again and again and again, with his face white and red and black, screaming and screaming!”
Wren lurched forward and wrapped her arms around the woman. “It’s all right. It’s not real. None of it is real.”
Yaga shoved her away. “But it is real!” She pointed out across the palace grounds to the three huge ships still sitting at anchor in the channel, surrounded by the smoking remains of the Hellan destroyers. “He’s there! He’s shrieking and gasping, all alone on a rope in the dark. And tomorrow they’ll do it all over again, and I’ll see it all over again!”
“You need to sleep, Yaga,” Wren grabbed the woman’s hands and tried to make her focus. “Are you listening to me? You need to sleep, right now.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Again she pulled out of Wren’s grasp and stumbled to the railing. “I’ve been trying to sleep for weeks. I lie in the dark, all alone, in the quiet, and I close my eyes and try to think of nothing, try to rest, to slip away. But my mind never rests. The nightmares churn on and on and on!”
“Drugs! What about drugs? I can make something to make you sleep. I know a dozen plants that can put you to sleep in a heartbeat,” Wren said breathlessly. “Take me to your herb cellar, or to the palace kitchens. I can do this, I can help you sleep!”
“No! Not now. I can’t, I can’t.” The old woman clutched her head and leaned back. “How can I sleep when my baby is screaming in agony right in front of me? How could I forgive myself? How could I ever face him again, knowing that while he was in hell I was resting in my own bed?”
Woden, give me strength!
Wren swept her right hand across the balcony, hurling a great fist of aether out of the maelstrom beyond the railing and sending it into the witch’s chest. But Yaga merely raised an arm and the wave of aether burst apart into glimmering motes in the cold air.
“I’m trying to help you, Yaga,” Wren said slowly. “I want to help you, I do. I want to give you peace. I want to end your suffering, end your nightmares, end your pain. But if you won’t let me help you, then I’ll just have to stop you, because I’ll be damned if I’ll let you kill everyone in this city for your grief, no matter how much you love your son.”
Gudrun, Kara, this is your last chance. I swear to the good lord Woden that if you don’t help me now I will throw this ring of yours into the sea and leave your souls trapped in the dark until Ragnarok comes!
Wren made a fist, and a shape appeared in the air before her.
“Kara,” Wren whispered.
The ancient vala glared, her long black braids clattering with tiny bones. “You’re a fool of a child. How dare you threaten us? How dare you!”
All around her, the dim shades of the eight valas of Denveller appeared, short and tall and crippled, hissing at the girl in black.
Damn them all. I can do it alone!
Wren thrust out her hand and the aether obeyed her. The mist rose and smashed across the room into the old witch, sending her reeling against the far wall.
Yaga straightened up and pushed her long silvery hair back from her face. “I’m tired of this.” She pointed her hand at the girl and the aether rushed back across the room.
Wren dove to the floor and swept her hand over her head, guiding the aether up and away from her as she scrambled behind the wall at the edge of the stairs that led back down to the ground level. The aether swelled and flooded past her, racing and racing through the wall and out into the night, and when it finally stopped she dropped her arm to her side, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.
Wren scrambled to her feet and dashed across the room. Yaga glared at her and raised both arms, but the girl crashed into her waist and knocked her to the ground before she could summon up another wave of freezing mist. The two women collided with the wall and then toppled to the floor in a tangle of skirts and hair and bones.
Huffing and straining, Wren grabbed the old witch’s wrists and wrestled her arms down to her sides as she rolled over. After a moment’s quiet struggle, Wren sat up on top of Yaga’s chest with the older woman’s arms pinned at her sides under Wren’s knees.
Wren leaned back and blew a curling lock of red hair out of her face as she paused to catch her breath.
Well, that wasn’t so hard after all.
“Now what?” Yaga grunted through her clenched teeth. “Are you going to sit on me forever? I am immortal, you stupid little girl. I will never grow tired, but you are already exhausted. Soon I’ll throw you to the ground, and crush your heart with my bare hands.”
“She’s right,” Gudrun muttered in Wren’s ear. “If you don’t think of something soon, you’ll be a corpse before midnight comes.”
“Help me or shut up!” Wren shouted.
Gudrun’s presence vanished and Wren looked down at Yaga’s smug grin.
“Having trouble, girl?” Yaga asked. “Are the souls in your little ring too much for you to master? How many are there, again? Nine, ten? Heh. There are dozens of souls in each of my bracelets, and you don’t hear me crying out for them to be silent.” The witch laughed.
Wren frowned down at her. “I’m sorry about this, but it should only hurt for a minute.” Wren folded her fingers together, turning her two hands into one bony hammer, raised her arms above her head, and brought them down as hard as she could on the old woman’s cackling face.
Yaga instantly went limp.
Wren leapt up and rolled the woman onto her stomach and whipped off her own belt. Then she stripped the clanking bracelets off the witch’s arms and bound her wrists together with the belt. She was still struggling to fit the ends of the belt together when the old woman groaned and twitched.
Done.
Wren stepped away with the bracelets cradled in her arm.
Yaga rolled onto her side and looked up with a trickle of dark blood on her lip. “You stupid child.”
Wren shook her head. “No, I’m not stupid. I know exactly what I’m doing, sister. I had a very good teacher.” She sat down on the floor a few paces away and let the bracelets fall into her lap. “His name is Omar Bakhoum. You might remember him. A middle-aged gentleman from Alexandria. Friendly, clever, and just a little bit immortal.”