A hand grabbed Jane's arm, dragged her backward. She hit the ground hard, and her right side flared with pain. As she scrambled to her feet, the blue-clad man—her attacker—dropped his dagger and clutched his throat. Tendrils of black flame encircled his neck, drew tight, lifted him upward. He rose in the air, three feet—six feet—twelve feet... His mouth formed a soundless O of horror—his face turned bluer than his robes—
Without warning, he plummeted, head-first toward the earth. There was a sickening crunch of flesh meeting rock.
Jane scrambled away from the man's still form. His neck was bent at an angle too acute to be healthy, and his chest did not move. But of course he can't breathe anymore, Jane thought, a spinal transection would mess up the nerves innervating his diaphragm... And then it hit Jane that her attacker was dead; she was staring at a dead man's body...
All around her, Riders battled more blue-clad men. Jane did not know where to look, what to do. The clamor was deafening, and she was unarmed, defenseless—
"Down," said a cold, unruffled voice. Before Jane's sluggish brain could think what that meant, a force pressed her to the ground. The breath whooshed from her lungs, and she gasped with the pain of it. Metal sang nearby, and heat singed her shoulder. She heard a screech of agony, abruptly extinguished. She pressed her face into the ground and shut her eyes.
When Jane dared look up again, the fighting was almost over. Most of the blue-clad soldiers lay dead on the ground. The enemy fighters were retreating toward the forest.
A whimper reached her ears.
Jane clambered to her feet.
Nikolay stood a few paces away. His amber eyes gleamed with satisfaction. A blue-clad man, barely more than a boy, hung suspended before him in the air.
"Please—" said the boy.
"Mercy?" Nikolay sounded bored. His gaze flicked to the corpse of the man who had attacked Jane, then back to the boy. "Was this your leader?"
The boy glanced at the dead man and shut his eyes. His whole body quivered. "My lord, please—p-please let me die, in the glory of Velos—"
Nikolay turned to Jane. A smile played about his lips. "These men attacked us and made a serious threat on your life. What think you, Avtorka? Ought I to give this Kanachskiy scum what he wants?"
"I.... what—"
Jane shoved her shaking hands in the folds of her cloak and bunched fistfuls of cloth in her fingers. Her thoughts felt numb and brittle, like flowers glazed with ice. "You—" She coughed. "You can't just k-kill him in cold blood."
Staring into Nikolay's eyes, Jane suspected he could. He looked amused, like this sort of thing was all in a day's work. A sick feeling squirmed in Jane's gut.
"So, you would have me let him go?" said Nikolay. She had the horrible suspicion he was testing her. "I cannot let him run back to his people, with the details of your existence, and our location."
The boy's eyes met hers, defiant and furious and terrified. He had an angular chin and heavy eyebrows and his brown hair was clotted with a mixture of mud, soot, and blood. A vermilion gash on his cheek oozed sluggishly.
"Take him prisoner," Jane said, horrified. "You don't have to kill him!"
Nikolay raised his hand. A gag appeared around the Kanachskiy boy's mouth, choking off his protests. Ropes materialized on his wrists and ankles.
"Tie him onto one of the horses," Nikolay told the commander. "Have him watched closely. Perhaps the boy will have useful information for us... though I doubt it."
Commander Olesya brushed past Nikolay, stone-faced and silent. Her clothes were bloody, but she did not appear injured. She took the rope binding the boy, who sagged against her.
Nikolay turned to the green-eyed Rider with whom Jane had spoken earlier—Drazan, that was his name. "Two Kanachskiy men escaped," said Nikolay. "Find them. The rest of us will ride out now."
"A few of my Riders are wounded," said Commander Olesya. Her voice was angry.
"The Avtorka and I will ride out now," Nikolay repeated. "Follow at your own pace if you must."
For the second time that day, Jane found herself sailing onto the back of Nikolay's wyvern. Stiff and shaking, she clutched the reins as the wyvern lifted off the ground.
In third grade, their parents took the family fishing by the lake near their house. Sandra was unfazed about threading worms on her hook—It doesn't hurt them, Jane, they don't feel pain like we do!—but young Jane had whimpered and shielded her eyes against the horror of the writhing worms. It was even worse when they actually caught a fish. It flailed on the line in a desperate bid for life, mouth working furiously, gills gasping for water that was just out of reach. When Jane closed her eyes now, instead of the fish, her treacherous mind conjured the image of the man who'd tried to kill her—his legs thrashing wildly—his mouth a silent O of terror—
There were killers in this world, people who murdered without remorse, enemies who wanted her dead or imprisoned or who-knew-what-else. People who would charge at her with flaming daggers and grinning, greedy faces. And there was Nikolay, who was also a killer, who would go to terrible lengths to get what he wanted, who sat just behind her on their wyvern...
She couldn't look at Nikolay for the rest of the flight. The instant they landed, she slid off the wyvern as fast as she could. Her knees buckled as her feet hit the ground, and she crouched next to the wyvern, resolutely not looking at him.
Commander Olesya had decided to split the troop in two. A few of her Riders, including the green-eyed Drazan, had accompanied Nikolay and Jane. The rest, including Olesya, had stayed behind. Nikolay seemed irritated by the Riders' presence, but Jane was grateful. The last thing she wanted was to be left alone with a man who had no qualms turning people into puppets with his magic.
Jane needed to pee again. But she was terrified of going into the woods. She had never been afraid of the forest before. The woods near her house had been safe, if you didn't count Lyme-disease-infected deer ticks or the occasional rabid raccoon.
But Lyme disease was curable. Rabies could be prevented, if you got anti-serum in time.
Getting your throat slit was not treatable.
Falling twenty feet to the ground head-first was not treatable.
... Jane REALLY had to pee.
Perhaps triggered by the discomfort of her bladder, her logical side finally asserted itself. This is stupid, it grumbled. The odds of two attacks in one day are astronomically small. You're being exactly like those vapid fantasy heroines you despise, who fall apart completely at the first sign of danger.
Jane snorted. Thank you, Brain...? Where have you been all this time?
It was the fastest she'd ever relieved herself. The instant she was done, she rushed out of the forest, startled by the chitter of some animal—a bat?—overhead.
"Fearful thing, aren't you?" said Nikolay.
He watched her thoughtfully, like a hawk tracking a field mouse. Jane ignored him. She should have been tired, but there was no chance of sleep, not while adrenaline from the attack still hummed in her veins. She strode to the wyvern, dug her textbook out of her pack, and marched to the opposite side of the fire.
When she looked up again, he still watched her. His face was unnaturally pale in the darkness, and for the second time that day, she had the unsettling impression that he might be ill. From this angle, his cheeks looked gaunt, and his face held shadows. His eyes glinted in the firelight.
"Truly..." he mused, and again, Jane thought she heard bitterness beneath his words, "the gods bless us all."
Jane's lips pinched together. "I've already told you, the gods didn't choose me, and I'm not your 'blessing'."
"Rude words, to the man who saved your life." He tilted his head, and cruel amusement flashed in his eyes. "I could have left you to face that Kanachskiy mage on your own, as practice for your godstests. Thus far, I've done better at saving you from the evils of this world than the uncle you love so dearly. I believe a thanks might be in order...?"
Jane swallowed. A sudden, fierce anger pulsed through her.
"You've dragged me around like a possession; I'm quite sure you're only helping me for your own gain, and I can think of no reason why I should be thanking you..."
...was what she wanted to say. But the words died on her tongue. She did not dare antagonize him.
She was alone here.
So very alone...
For the first time since arriving in Mir, tears rose to her eyes. She pinched the skin of her wrist, hoping the pain would distract her from the crushing sensation that swelled in her throat, but her vision continued to blur.
Her uncle was not coming. Even if he had been responsible for the portal and by some miracle made it to the temple, there was no way he could follow them here, not with enemy soldiers blocking the way. Not unless he sprouted wings and learned to fly...
Cloth brushed her hand. Blankly, she stared at the handkerchief that had materialized in her lap. At the realization of who put it there, she felt another flare of frustration. She wanted to grab the stupid kerchief, tear it into pieces, and throw it to the ground. But her nose was uncomfortably snotty, and she didn't have anything resembling a tissue in her pockets.
"Thanks," she said reluctantly.
Nikolay did not reply.
Jane closed her textbook and lay down on her pallet. Perhaps things would look better in the morning; they usually did after a good night's rest...
She must have been more tired than she thought, for the instant her head hit the ground, she fell asleep.
In her dream, there were three deities—two goddesses and one god—all tall and golden and brimming with power. The male god paced like a tiger, alternately restles and still. "Send her back," he said. "She's weak and frail and ugly, not like Eloise at all. She won't survive." But the middle goddess, who was tall and achingly beautiful, shook her head and touched Jane's shoulder...
When Jane woke, it was past dawn. For a moment, she lay with her eyes closed, trying to remember other details of her dream. The middle goddess had said something about Jane being carefully chosen... that Jane would go home when she completed three godstests and Wrote in the Book of Truths... And there had been some mention of rules...
Groggily, Jane opened her eyes and sat up. She wished she could remember more. Perhaps if her back didn't smart so much from lying on the ground... if her head didn't ache from lack of sleep...
Nikolay sat beside her. He looked tired too, and Jane wondered if he had slept at all. Absently, he rubbed his right forearm; Jane thought she saw him wince. A book lay open in his lap.
"You're awake." He did not look up from the book. "Eat quickly. We leave in ten minutes."
Jane accepted the tasteless porridge offered by one of the Riders. Then she did a double-take.
"That's my textbook."
"Yes." Nikolay glared down at the letters as though they had personally offended him. "What, may I ask, is an al-gor-ithm?"
Jane rubbed sleep from her eyes. It was too early in the day to be quizzed. "An algorithm... is like a set of rules, a list of instructions a computer can follow in order. Usually you use a particular algorithm for solving a particular problem. For instance, the problem of sorting a list of numbers. One algorithm might be to run through the list picking out and removing the smallest remaining number each time. Another algorithm is to divide the list in half recursively and then merge the halves in numerical order..."
"So they are used for making machines work." His lip curled scornfully. "Yes... Earth is full of machines that run off something not-quite-magic which perform great feats. Primitive, but I suppose to survive in a world without magic, one must become inventive."
"How did you... Have you been to Earth?"
A smile played about his mouth, as though he was amused at some private joke. "I should like to see it someday," he said. "I've heard a great deal about it."
"From who?"
"Former avtorkas." He toyed with a loose sheet of paper. "Tell me." He pointed to the middle of the page. "Is this a good score in your world?"
"Wha—hey, give me that!"
Jane snatched the report card out of his hand. It had arrived in the mail the previous day, and in her ensuing fight with Sandra, she'd stuffed it into her algorithms textbook and forgot about it.
"It appears you are quite a genius. It's good to know that the new Avtorka has some degree of intelligence." He smiled slowly, gently. "Hopefully your aptitude with books will translate to an aptitude toward the tests you will face to get home."
Jane frowned. Somehow, she doubted any aptitude she possessed toward books and book learning would help her navigate this foreign world. And she didn't trust Nikolay's sudden change in tone at all. Beneath his pleasant inflections, he radiated insincerity.
What horrible thing did I do in a past life to get so lucky?
Jane's lips twitched. Sometimes—when her brain felt in danger of melting from over-studying—she read embarrassingly cheesy, badly-written fantasy stories, books her friends and Sandra could never know about. In them, it was an unspoken rule that on arriving in a new world, the heroine always fell in love with the first man she saw.
I've been shortchanged, Jane thought grimly. I should send the gods a formal complaint. Or request transfer to a new planet, where the male lead is not Obviously Evil.
The thought was absurd enough to make her snicker, and she was in a far better mood as she mounted the wyvern.
They flew almost nonstop, with only a brief break to water the wyverns and snatch a few mouthfuls of food. The land below them had morphed from towering mountains into gently rolling hills, and Jane saw farmers below tending livestock. As the sun dipped low in the sky, a castle and a town came into view, bisected by a winding, narrow river.
"Sengilach castle," said Nikolay. "Beside it, is Tolsk, the capitol of Somita. Does your precious Earth have any places that can match this?" And before Jane could reply that most of Earth's towns were quite different, their wyvern dropped into a dizzying dive. When they drew level once again, they were much lower, low enough such that Jane could make out people below in the streets. Some of them looked up as they flew over. She saw a few raise their arms. "Avtorka!" they shouted. "Avtorka! Gods'-chosen! Avtorka!"
Jane felt more nervous than ever. Her dream last night disturbed her greatly. It corroborated everything Nikolay had told her... a magical book she had to write in to get home... tests she had to endure to prove herself...
And there was that one god who was sure I'd fail... Her hands clutched the saddle-horn of their wyvern. "What... are the expectations of an avtorka, exactly?"
"The tsar will tell you when we arrive."
If possible, this alarmed Jane even more. But before she could ask more questions, Nikolay coaxed the wyvern into another dive, this one steeper than the last. Jane clung to the wyvern's neck. When she finally dared raise her face from the wyvern's scales, they were alighting in the middle of a lavishly decorated courtyard.
Jane descended shakily from the wyvern as the palace doors opened before them. A line of soldiers assembled on either side of the stairs leading up to the hall. An overdressed man in a vibrant blue cape hurried down the steps, eagerly adjusting his coronet.
"The Crown Prince of Somita," said Nikolay's voice in her ear. "You may want to bow."
Author's note:
Thank you SO MUCH to everyone for reading this far! I get a little tingle of happiness whenever I get a comment or vote or view on this story. You guys rock! If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider giving it a vote. And tune in next week to read about Jane's first encounter with royalty!