Uprooted(50)
Author: Naomi Novik

Krystyna whispered to me, “He’s in the barn. We put him in the—I thought to have the room back, we didn’t want—I didn’t mean any harm—”

She didn’t need to explain why she hadn’t wanted that tormented face in her house, every night. “It’s all right,” I said. “Krystyna, Jerzy might—what we can try, it might not—it will work. But he might die of it.”

Her hands were gripping the side of the cradle, but she only nodded a little. I think he was already gone in her mind by then: as though he’d been at a battle that had been lost, and she only waited to hear the final word.

We went outside. Seven small rooting pigs and their big-bellied mother looked up snuffling incuriously at our horses from a new-built pen by the side of the house, the wood of the fence still pale brown and unweathered. We rode around it and single-file down a narrow path through the trees, already almost overgrown, to the small grey barn. It stood in tall grass full of eager saplings springing up, a few ragged holes in the thatch where birds had picked it apart for nests and the bar across the door rusted in its hooks. It already had the feeling of a long-abandoned place.

“Open it up, Michal,” the captain of the guard said, and one of the soldiers slid down and went tramping ahead through the grass. He was a young man, and like most of the soldiers he wore his brown hair long and straight, with a long dangling mustache and beard, braided, all of them like pictures in the Dragon’s history books of the old days, the founding of Polnya. He was as strong as a young oak, tall and broad even among the other soldiers; he slid the bar over with one hand and pushed open both of the doors with an easy shove, letting the afternoon sunlight into the barn.

Then he jerked back with a wordless choked noise in his throat, hand moving towards his sword-belt, and almost stumbled over his own feet backing away. Jerzy was propped against the back wall, and the light had shone full onto the snarl of his twisted face. The statue’s eyes were looking straight out at us.

“What a hideous grimace,” Prince Marek said in an offhand tone. “All right, Janos,” he added to the chief of his guard, sliding off his horse, “Take the men and the horses to the village green, and get them under some sort of cover. The beasts won’t sit still for a lot of magic and howling, I imagine.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Janos said, and jerked his head to his second.

The soldiers were as happy as the horses to be out of it. They took our mounts, too, and went eagerly, a few of them glancing sidelong through the barn doors. I saw Michal look back over his hunched shoulders several times, the ruddy color gone out of his face.

None of them understood, really, about the Wood. They weren’t men from the valley—as I’ve said, the Dragon didn’t need to levy a troop to send to the king’s army—and they weren’t from anywhere nearby, either. They carried shields marked with a crest of a knight upon a horse, so they were all from the northern provinces around Tarakai, where Queen Hanna had come from. Their idea of magic was a lightning-strike on a battlefield, deadly and clean. They didn’t know what they were riding to face.

“Wait,” the Dragon said, before Janos turned his own horse to follow the rest of them. “While you’re there: buy two sacks of salt and divide it into pouches, one for each man; then find scarves to cover all their mouths and noses, and buy every axe that anyone will spare you.” He looked at the prince. “There won’t be any time to waste. If this even works, the best we’ll have won is the briefest opportunity—a day, two at most, while the Wood recovers from the blow.”

Prince Marek nodded to Janos, confirming the orders. “See to it everyone gets a little rest, if they can,” he said. “We’ll ride straight for the Wood as soon as we’re done here.”

“And pray that the queen isn’t deep inside it,” the Dragon added, flatly; Janos darted a glance at him and back to the prince, but Marek only slapped the flank of Janos’s horse and turned away, a dismissal; Janos followed the other men away, down the narrow path and out of sight.

We were left alone just inside the barn, the five of us. Dust floated through the sunlight, the warm sweet smell of hay, but with a faint choking undercurrent of rotting leaves beneath. I could see a broken jagged-edged hole gaping in the side of the wall: where the wolves had come through, not to eat the cattle but to savage and corrupt them. I hugged myself. The day was growing late: we’d ridden straight across the valley to Dvernik since before the morning light, only stopping long enough to let the horses rest. Wind stirred through the doors and blew against my neck, a cold touch. The sun was orange on Jerzy’s face, his wide unseeing stone eyes. I remembered the cold, still feeling of being stone: I wondered if Jerzy could see out of his own fixed gaze, or if the Wood had closed him into darkness.

The Dragon looked at the Falcon and made a wide mocking sweep of his arm towards Jerzy. “Perhaps you’d care to be of some assistance?”

The Falcon gave him a thin, smiling bow and went to stand before the statue with upraised hands. The words to lift the stone spell came ringing off his tongue, beautifully enunciated, and as he spoke Jerzy’s fingertips curled in with a twitch as the stone drained out of them. The stiffened claws of his hands were still outstretched to either side of him, and the rusting chains hanging from his wrists had been nailed to the wall. The metal links scraped against one another as he started to move. The Falcon backed away a little, still smiling, as the stone retreated slowly down from the crown of Jerzy’s head and his eyes began to roll and dart from side to side. A shrill faint thread of laughter wheezed out of him as his mouth came loose; then the stone freed his lungs, and the smile slid off the Falcon’s face as it rose and rose to a shrieking pitch.

Kasia moved against me, clumsily, and I gripped her hand. She stood beside me like a statue herself, rigid and remembering. Jerzy howled and laughed and howled, over and over, as though he was trying to make up for all the howls that had been closed up inside his stone chest. He howled until he was out of breath, and then he lifted his head and grinned at us all with his blackened and rotting teeth, his skin still mottled green. Prince Marek was staring at him, his hand clenched on his sword; the Falcon had backed away to his side.

“Hello, princeling,” Jerzy crooned to him, “do you miss your mother? Would you like to hear her scream, too? Marek!” Jerzy shrilled suddenly, in a woman’s voice, high and desperate. “Marechek, save me!”