The name still echoed in the chamber as Baba Yaga leaned forward, toppling off the brink like a cup off a table. The spell worked: She never touched water. Instead, the surface carried her like strong hands into the place she asked for.
She found herself lying on something hard and rough.
A loud, roaring, rattling sound was getting louder and louder. What could it be?
She raised her head from the ground, opening her eyes into the twilight.
A new noise at once was added, something screeching, metal on metal. She rose to her feet, looking for the source of the noise.
A big, awkward-looking house made all of tin sat on four black feet, like a crippled animal, in the middle of the hard surface where she had been lying. The surface itself was of miraculous smoothness, as if someone had scythed the earth itself. Then she realized - this was a road, like the ones the Romans built, only wider and less finished on the top. And this house must be capable of movement.
A man leaned out the window of the house, shouting at her in some barbarous dialect. She only caught a few words of what he said, and didn't care. She waved him to silence.
It didn't work. He didn't even pause.
Terror thrilled through her. Had she taken herself to a place where her powers didn't work?
She tried a much stronger spell of silence, murmuring the words and making the signs behind her back - no need to anger him, if she turned out to be utterly powerless.
This spell should have silenced him for weeks; instead, it merely calmed him down. He mumbled a little more - unthinkable that he should have a voice at all! - and then, without so much as making a single pass through the air or dusting his house with powder, he caused it to move forward, moving around her and passing her, leaving her behind in a cloud of dust.
She couldn't be sure it was her spell that calmed him down or simply that he had run out of wrath. This was an urgent question that had to be settled right away.
She sniffed the air, turning in all directions. Her sense of power was weakened, but it was not gone. She caught faint traces of the princess - she had walked near this very road, and not long ago - but her smell was all but lost in another one that left her stunned. Mikola Mozhaiski! After all her pains to cast spells to make him neglect his beloved land of Taina and his friends there, she had ended up coming to the very place that was now the center of his power. No wonder her powers were so sharply suppressed here! And no wonder that awful boy had caused her so many problems - he came from Mikola Mozhaiski, and when he led the princess out of this world, of course he brought her back to his master.
Well, there are more gods in this world. She had the power of Bear, didn't she? And Bear was more than a match for Mozhaiski.
Except that the source of her power was far off, and she had to draw on it across time and space, while Mozhaiski was powerful here, in the present moment.
She sniffed the air more deeply. Yes, masked by the heavy scent of Mozhaiski's benign, summery air, there was still a trace of winter in the air. Bear was still in this world.
She raised her hand to summon him, but then caught herself in time: In this world, Bear was not necessarily under her spell. The Bear whose power she controlled was the Bear of another time and place; here he might well be free, or under the power of a great wizard with whom she dared not do battle in her weakened state.
Tread softly, she told herself. Plenty of time to watch and wait, see how the land lies here, find out who makes the magic of tin houses on rolling feet. Not Mozhaiski - this was not the sort of thing he did, generally confining himself to meddlesome rescues of sailors and gifts of rain to farmers' fields. No, a greater wizardry was at work in the world, or some god only just now coming into his own.
Let the princess lead her through this world. Baba Yaga could afford to wait. Though she was bound not to lay hands on the princess directly, that boy was