The Ranger of Marzanna (The Goddess War #1) - Jon Skovron Page 0,150

her breath, she left the mine to retrieve Peppercorn. She found the bandit who’d fled lying on the ground next to him, his skull kicked in.

“Did he try to steal you, my Perchinka?” Sonya scratched him behind his ears.

Peppercorn whinnied quietly, still looking a little offended.

She gave him a piece of carrot, then brought him back to where the unconscious bandit still hung upside down. She took a large bucket and a bundle of leafless branches from Peppercorn’s saddlebags. She placed the bucket beneath the bandit’s head, and cut the branches down until they fit inside the bucket. Then she sat down to wait.

While she waited, the bandit woke up.

“I’m… still alive…,” he muttered.

“Can you feel your feet?” she asked him.

“No…” He looked blearily around, trying to focus his eyes. “What’s going on?”

“You can’t feel your feet at all?” she asked.

“No, I—”

“I guess it’s time.”

She leaned over and slit his throat carefully right at the artery. Then she stepped back and watched the warm, steaming blood pour neatly into the bucket. He began thrashing, and the blood started to fall outside the bucket, so she had to hold him still. The more blood that was caught in the bucket, the more it would satisfy the Lady Marzanna.

After a few moments, he grew still and the blood began to drain more slowly. She squeezed him a few times, but it didn’t seem to make much difference, so she sat back down and waited.

Once all the blood had drained into the bucket, she drew her knife again and carefully, patiently skinned him. She tried to keep the skin as intact as possible, because she knew it would please the Lady. When she was finished, she placed the skin into the bucket with the blood and sticks. She dragged the bucket away from the corpse to the center of the room and knelt before it. Then she spoke in Old Izmorozian, begging that the Lady Marzanna grant her an audience.

“Lady Marzanna, ochen’ proshu! Pogovori so mnoy!”

She repeated this several times while pressing her forehead to the dirt floor, then waited. Finally, she heard the cooling blood begin to stir in the bucket, and she lifted her head.

The bloody skin wrapped around the sticks and stretched upward until a thin, vaguely human shape stood in the bucket. She had no nose, and her eyes were a pulsing black. She smiled at Sonya, showing neat rows of black teeth that glittered in the firelight.

“It is nice to see you still alive, my precious Lisitsa.” Her voice scraped across Sonya’s face like windburn.

“My Lady, I am honored by your visit.”

“Well, you did it just as Tigr instructed, so I thought I should reward you. Besides, I am curious to know what you seek.”

“Do… you know Bàs, my Lady?”

She cocked her pointed, angular head to one side. “You ask of Bàs?”

“The Uaine worship a god of death with that name, and I wondered if you might know him, or even be related to him.”

She laughed quietly, and it sounded like the wind shaking bare, dead branches. “Of course I know him. Because he is me.”

“But… he is male, my Lady.”

“Does Winter have a gender?” she asked. “Does Death?”

“No, my Lady.”

“Neither do I. When we have met on the banks of the Eventide River, the reflection you saw was shaped by your expectation. The mortal mind cannot comprehend my true form.”

“Of course not, my Lady. My apologies.”

“Have you sought me out to ask such a simple thing?”

“No, my Lady. I was merely curious. I have sought you out because I wish to ask for a boon.”

“Oh?” She leaned forward, her black eyes unblinking.

“I seek to defeat my brother, Sebastian Turgenev.”

“Ah.” Lady Marzanna nodded. “He is a powerful wizard, your brother.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“But he is mortal, like any man. And he can only cast his magic on what he can see. Wait until night, when your blessed eyes see farther than his. Then a single arrow will solve the problem of your brother.”

“I know I ask much, my Lady, but… I was wondering if there is a way I might defeat him without killing him.”

The Lady Marzanna’s stick-thin figure leaned back. “Ah. I see. You must get close to him in order to subdue him, but then he might freeze the very blood in your veins before you ever touch him. So you seek a way to nullify his magic.”

“If such a possibility exists, then yes.”

“It is no small thing you seek, but your work thus far has pleased